The Various and Ingenious Machines

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machines with bellicose instruments that are sufficient not only for the aid of fighting, but for attacking and defeating his enemies; just as the Romans did, who were so ingenious in this that foreign peoples estimated them not as men of the earth, but as Spirits descended from Heaven to destroy the human race. Having presupposed therefore the utility and the great excellence, or rather the divinity of the mathematical sciences, it is no wonder if, having been tasted by those ancient men of the first times—who before the universal inundation of the world-machine enjoyed with happier wit a more tranquil Heaven than we enjoy now—having given themselves to the consideration of the celestial things and their virtue, and together rising the marvelous ornament of the terrestrial Base, they raised two columns, one of stone and the other of brick, and in them they incised diligently all the things found by them, for perpetual memory of the world, to bear witness to how much the aforementioned science was in esteem, even from those days that preceded all others. After the flood also, this sublime faculty flourished and grew much among the Chaldeans, and principally for the continuous study that the great Patriarch Abramo Abraham made therein. It was then similarly held in highest reverence and consideration by the Egyptians, the aforementioned science taught to them by the Chaldeans, not only for the joyful amenity of the Heaven, but for the spacious plains of that most fertile region. Finally, from the Egyptians it was transferred to the Greeks by the industry of Talete Milesio Thales of Miletus, of Pitagora Samio Pythagoras of Samos, and of many other most valiant men: who, being eager to learn it, exposed themselves to plow the amplest seas and to wander to most distant regions, and all of Egypt, where the Greeks wish that the same Mathematics were born and later nourished: which, with the exercise and the writings of those marvelous men of the world—Anassagora Anaxagoras, Enodipe Oenopides, Zenodoto Zenodotus, Britone Bryson, Antifone Antiphon, Hippocrate Hippocrates, Theodoro Theodorus, Platone Plato, Archita Archytas, Aristarco Aristarchus, Pappo Pappus, Archimede Archimedes, and infinite others—were illustrated more than can be said; and principally by that divine Archimede Archimedes: who after having with most stupendous instruments...