Epistle

...deserve their three-fold reward. Therefore, since I recognize you as the best, most just, and strongest of men, and since I behold your favors toward my own homeland, I have judged you worthy of every kind of praise. Among others, the greatest things one might possess are the virtue of ancestors, great deeds, power, and fame. You, who have had as Lords of Mantua not only a father or grandfather, but great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers, and great-great-great-grandfathers—such that you are now the tenth in that line—yet this is not what I shall proclaim, lest perhaps you say with Ulysses:

Both lineage and ancestors, and those things which we ourselves have not done,
I scarcely call our own. — original: "Et genus, & proauos, & quae non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra uoco." A famous quote from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book XIII, where Ulysses argues that a man should be judged by his own merit rather than his family history.

But this is not your primary praise, O Prince—you who have even more abundantly adorned the glory in military matters of your family (which in that field is second to none), a glory taken up from your ancestors. For through your courage, you brought the most fortified cities of Gaul Referring to the French territories during the Italian Wars. under your power. Yet you are no less a master of the arts of peace than those of war: for by your virtue you so reconciled Henry, King of Britain Henry VIII of England., to Charles the Emperor Holy Roman Emperor Charles V., that among other examples of faith and friendship, the King, when dying, left the Emperor as the guardian for his only son and heir. Through your integrity while you ruled the Sicilians and the Insubres The people of the Duchy of Milan., you renewed the Age of Saturn A classical reference to the "Golden Age," a mythical period of peace and prosperity., so that both provinces, having left behind an age of iron, now enjoy an age of gold.

But shall I say only a few things out of many? Or will you feel yourself bound by a certain silent suggestion to that which the immense nobility of your soul has compelled? Far from it. Therefore, someone might say: "What, then, do you bring forward worthy of such a great Prince?" Something, I say, than which I could offer nothing greater.

For my works on Arithmetic are of a most pleasant study and singular invention, yet they are things of which the more dull-witted original: "obesiores," literally "fatter" or "grosser," here meaning those lacking intellectual refinement. might say: "To what end is such a spectacle of human ingenuity?" So too they quibble with our Geometry, and even our published writings On the Immortality of the Soul. I have cultivated Astronomy with wonderful, new, and true discoveries, but it had already contracted so much infamy from the vice of the ancients that the name of the discipline subtracts more authority from the book than our name adds to it. My Medical works are excerpts from the writings of others; the books On Consolation are of an ill-omened name; those On Wisdom teem with errors. And in general, as they say, all these are of a certain kind that bring no profit, except for the Medical ones, of which only the smallest part has been published to this day.

"Let him publish," these critics say, "some new and subtle invention which is useful to the human race and even for the acquiring of wealth." I say it is not now the time for these individual slanders to be discussed. One must obey even one's enemies and acquiesce to their conditions, since by these conditions—which are within our power—every handle for speaking ill is snatched away. Therefore, I shall teach those critics that it was not the strength that was lacking, but the will. Meanwhile, however, this best effort must be offered to the one who deserves best of virtue and of my homeland. I was looking about here and there, to see if I might find The text breaks off here; the catchword "uenirem" at the bottom of the original page indicates the word "inuenirem" (find) continues on the next leaf. anything worthy...