Complete Works, Volume 1: The Book on Games of Chance

We nominate, dedicate, and consecrate these works—so varied, so curious, so expected—to your Name: And most deservedly; since in that sublimity of Dignity, in that splendor of the Purple, our Books maintain their honor with You; and you love the Typographical Art and Booksellers, and are accustomed to praise them as Guardians of Immortality. And although you live as the busiest of mortals, you dispense their own times to all the Muses: and refresh your sacred mind at their sacred cushion. Moreover, you consider studying and meditating to be a game, compared to those gloomy Laws and litigations, which could break even a man of iron and chalkenteron a man of tireless endurance/guts of copper, were it not that your Forensic Nightingales, the birds of the Palatine Apollo, occasionally soothe your ears and spirit. But those [you hear] in public; in private, however, in your ample and most select Library, the Apollo himself and the Chorus of the Muses sing to you. In which most sweet concert, our Cardano will also play his part not indecorously.

But other far greater things have impelled us to this dedication. All good men remember, and even bad men have not forgotten, how much the Fatherland owes to You; from that time when, in our most turbulent affairs, you dared with a few others to defend your station most constantly: and amid the daggers and the rabies of the hundred-headed