FABRICIUS’S PREFACE.

...to entice and challenge him. For just as Selden intended his book On the Syrian Gods original: "De Diis Syris" to be the first monument of his learning—a work published in London in the year 1617, through which he successfully established his name in the annals of fame—so too Schedius, as a display of a mind cultivated by learning, claimed for himself the subject of The German Gods original: "De Diis Germanis". Just as Selden divided his work into syntagmata term: "syntagmata" | A Greek-derived word meaning systematic arrangements or treatises., Schedius divided his elaborated book on this subject into syngrammata term: "syngrammata" | A Greek-derived word for written compositions or books..

In this regard, however, fortune did not favor him as much as it did Selden. It was Selden’s lot to put the finishing touches on his book and personally submit it, completed, to the printing presses. Living and breathing, he was able to witness his own fame and the praises of the learned—who received his work with universal applause—for nearly forty years thereafter, during which time he won over the minds of many with far more numerous and significant works.

But Schedius departed from this life before he had even passed his twenty-sixth year. Although he had several other works in progress in his desk, and some even ready for the press—such as the Genealogy of the Princes of Mecklenburg original: "Genealogiam Megapolitanorum Principum" and the Franceid, an epic poem original: "heroo carmine" modeled after the Aeneid and organized into twelve books—yet by no other monument...