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PREFACE.

...machines with warlike instruments, which were sufficient not only to assist in combat, but to attack and subdue their enemies; just as the Romans did, who were so ingenious in this that foreign peoples did not judge them to be men of the earth, but Spirits descended from Heaven to destroy the human race. Having therefore presupposed the great utility and excellence, indeed the divinity of the mathematical sciences, it is no wonder if, having been tasted by those ancient men of the earliest times—who, before the universal flooding of the world-machine original: "machina mondiale"—a Renaissance term for the universe or the physical structure of the world., enjoyed with a happier genius a more tranquil Heaven than we enjoy now; having given themselves to the contemplation of celestial things and their power, and at the same time the marvelous ornament of the earthly foundation arising—they raised two columns, one of stone and the other of brick. Upon these they diligently engraved all the things they had discovered, as a perpetual memory for the world, to bear witness to how much the aforementioned science was prized even from those days that preceded all others This refers to a popular Renaissance legend, often attributed to the historian Josephus, that the descendants of Seth built two pillars to preserve astronomical knowledge from the predicted destruction by fire and water.. After the flood, this sublime faculty flourished again and grew much among the Chaldeans Ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, famous in the 16th century for their early mastery of astronomy and mathematics., and principally through the continuous study made there by the great Patriarch Abraham. Then, the aforementioned science was similarly held in the highest reverence and consideration by the Egyptians, having been taught to them by the Chaldeans, not only because of the joyous pleasantness of their climate but because of the spacious plains of that most fertile region. Finally, from the Egyptians it was transferred to the Greeks through the industry of Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras of Samos, and many other most valiant men, who, being eager to learn it, exposed themselves to plowing the widest seas and wandering through the most distant regions and all of Egypt, where the Greeks maintain that Mathematics itself was born and later nurtured. These sciences, through the practice and the writings of those marvelous men—Anaxagoras, Enopides, Zenodotus, Briton, Antiphon, Hippocrates, Theodore, Plato, Archytas, Aristarchus, Pappus, Archimedes, and infinite others—were illustrated more than can be said; and principally by that divine Archimedes, who, after having with most stupendous instruments...