The Complete Works of Plato Translated by Marsilio Ficino

[Image: A large, square woodcut illustration known as the 'Ascensian Press' original: "Prelum Ascensianum", used as a printer's mark. The woodcut depicts the interior of a 16th-century printing house. In the center, a man pulls the heavy bar of a wooden hand-press. To the right, an inker applies ink to the type-form using ink balls. In the background, a person works at a composing case. The frame of the press is inscribed with the words "Prelum Ascensianum".]

Although, most praiseworthy Father, I shrink back far from the most impudent practice of writers in this age—who, to the foul prejudice of every good man, without selection, without judgment, and without any shame, extol the lowest of mortals (scarcely worthy to be named) with the highest titles through manifest and unrestrained flattery. Indeed, one can hardly see a page written by them in which "most worshipful," "most dread," "most reverend," and monsters of that kind—unknown to the ancient observers of the Latin tongue—are not hammered in seven times over. This state of affairs has brought it about that, the matter being so corrupted, one is now unable to praise anyone according to their merits, since everyone judges similarly of all people.

Furthermore, it does not escape me that Licinius Fimbria, a man of consular rank, was gifted with immortal praise by the highest authors—by Marcus Tullius Cicero in the third book of On Duties original: "officiorum" and by Valerius Maximus in the seventh book of Ancient Institutions. When he was approached as a judge by Marcus Lutatius Pinthia, a most splendid Roman knight, concerning a wager Pinthia had made with an adversary that he [Pinthia] was a "good man," Fimbria refused to end that trial with his pronouncement. He did this (says Valerius, whose words these are) lest he should either rob a man of proven reputation of his fame if he judged against him, or swear that he was a "good man" when such a thing is comprised of innumerable praises.

And yet, although these things are so, following the common consensus of mortals and led by the judgment of ears and eyes (for we testify to what we have heard and seen), I have not feared to pronounce you a "most excellent man." For you have so ordered your life from your tenderest years original: "a teneris vnguiculis," a Latin idiom meaning from earliest childhood; you have so lived and do live in your royal councilorship and in your bishopric (and we pray that you may live long), that you are proven beyond all risk original: "extra oēm aleam," literally "beyond any throw of the dice" to be most worthy of that name. It is to such an extent that, if I wished to follow the custom of the ancients—who called everyone who was the best and greatest in their genre a "god"—I would deservedly address you as the god of men, of councilors, of Bishops, and of those whom they now call Peers of France, but formerly called the petty kings of the Gauls.

Therefore, since the works of Plato—whom all proclaim the god of philosophers, and who alone was worth all others to the poet Antimachus—translated by Marsilio Ficino and illustrated with an excellent paraphrase, are just now being sent out from our press, they seemed to seek the protection of no living person so much as yours, most worthy Prelate. We pray again and again that you do not deny them this in any great measure. Farewell.

From our printing house original: "chalcographia," literally 'bronze-writing shop', on the fifth day before the Kalends of June, in the year of human redemption 1518.