Three Books on Life

...to live. To these people, therefore, I next gave the book on the long life. But they were distrustful of earthly medicines and remedies in such a great matter. I added a book concerning a life that is both healthy and long, to be obtained from the heavens: so that from the living body of the world itself, a certain more vigorous life might be propagated into our body—which is like a member of the world—just as if from a vine.

I pray, most indulgent Lorenzo, that you forgive these books of medicine: if, while I wish to be a physician, I am somehow also a poet, even against my will, though perhaps not a good one. For Phoebus The Greek god Apollo, who presided over both healing and the arts. is the author of medicine and the master of poetry; he bestows his life upon us not so much through herbs as through the lyre and song. Moreover, among astrologers, Venus herself produces the musician as much as the physician.

But thus far, while I have been carefully consulting the life of scholars and those like them, I have neglected the health of my own books, so long as I allowed them to be separated from one another. Therefore, showing them duty original: "pius." Ficino uses the language of familial duty or "piety" to describe reuniting his separate treatises. for the first time, I now join them into a single body. Now that its limbs have been joined into one form, let life be present first.

However, this physical work—which is, as it were, my body—cannot receive any life except my own. And such a life depends solely upon my soul. But this soul has long lived with you, magnanimous Lorenzo, my patron: especially in that part of your most grand palace where, along with Plato, that work of ours on the immortality of souls Referring to Ficino's major philosophical work, Theologia Platonica (Platonic Theology), which he had previously dedicated to Lorenzo. is kept—which was dedicated to your name long ago.

Yet this soul of mine, even if it leads its life with you in a sort of blessed homeland, is nevertheless—as theologians maintain—restless in the meantime, until it may receive this physical work as its own body. Receive, therefore, best Lorenzo, after those books on souls, these books on the body as well: and with the same breath with which you long ago inspired those, now breathe favorably upon these. For in this way, this body shall live under your spirit through its own soul; and our soul, in turn, shall find rest in your household along with this, its now-joined body.

GENERAL INSCRIPTION.