In private notes the French philosopher acknowledged his debt to Vico’s theory of cyclical development and decay; and that debt, unnamed, appears in Montesquieu’s Greatness and Decadence of the Romans (1734). For the rest Vico remained almost unknown in France until Jules Michelet published (1827) an abridged translation of the Scienza nuova. Michelet described Italy as “the second mother and nurse who in my youth suckled me on Virgil, and in my maturity nourished me with Vico.”
