A rectangular ornamental woodcut headpiece spans the top of the page, featuring intricate foliage, scrolls, and small figures of putti. Below the title text, a large historiated initial "A" contains a scene with a muscular figure, possibly Hercules, carrying a club near architectural ruins.

THE PREFACE

OF THE AUTHOR

TO THE

READER

No ambition drove me to undertake
this task original: "provinciam," literally "province," used here to mean a duty or sphere of responsibility;
for I have always held a secluded original: "umbraticam," literally "in the shade," referring to a life of quiet study away from public life
life, far removed from all noise,
among my greatest delights.
My only purpose in this was
that, as much as lies in me, I might
promote the world of letters original: "rem literariam," the collective body of scholarship and literature.
When I first began this work, it was not at all in my mind
to share it with the literary world; I gathered it for my
own use alone. Now, however, at the urging of men
renowned for their learning, I release it to the public.
Indeed, when I observed how eagerly people seize
the Acts of the Learned original: "Acta Eruditorum," referring to the famous scholarly journal founded in Leipzig in 1682 and other books of that kind...