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

Furthermore, since Cardano’s fame was too great for him to cause trouble only for Julius Scaliger, it will perhaps not be alien to the proposed discourse to defend him equally against others whom he experienced as troublesome for much lighter reasons. For there were not lacking certain "fine-nosed" critics a classical idiom for pedantic, judgmental critics to whom it seemed shameful that he had written a history of his own life and actions, and had compiled so many books about his own books, that five at the very least are found to have been published at various times and places. I remember that not so long ago, it was considered a vice in the most famous philosopher of our time, Fortunio Liceto, that he had also composed a history of his own works, as if such philautia self-love were so infamous and disgraceful that, these two writers excepted, all the rest have striven to avoid it worse than a dog and a snake a reference to Horace's Satires.

Truly, those who burden Cardano with such invented crimes do nothing but betray their own supine and incredible ignorance. For what was said first regarding his life should not be blamed in him any more than in Cornelius Sulla, Julius Caesar, Octavius, Quintus Catulus, Hadrian, Marcus Antoninus, Flavius Josephus, Saint Augustine, Monluc, Thuanus, Scaliger, Puteanus, and not a few others, by whose example it is so far from being the case that one could sin, that by modestly imitating it—especially when the matter is significant and filled with memorable deeds or events—one obtains no small praise. The same must also be said about the books of his own works; to weave a series of these, when they are many or treat of varied matters, cannot be judged as anything but honest and useful. For besides the fact that such indices prevent anything from being attributed to an author that is not his own, they show which books were published once or several times, and in what place, in what format, at what time, which were separate or joined with others, which were enlarged, illustrated, corrected, and whether the final hand had been added to them, or if another is to be expected thereafter from the latest editions. It is certain that all these things bring much benefit and delight to all those who are seized by the most honest pleasure of books.

Since this was well understood by Galen, he edited the two commentaries on his own books which even now remain, To Bassus and To Eugenius; without which we would scarcely have the names of two hundred and more of his books which burned at Rome together with the Temple of Peace. His example was followed later by Saint Augustine, Dionysius the Carthusian, Erasmus, Gesner, Friedrich Nausea, Johannes Cochlaeus, Michael Neander, Nicolaus Nancelius, John Caius, Philippus Bosquierus, Henri Estienne, Jacobus Auzolius, Francesco Maurolico, Laurembergius, Genebrard, Campanella, Schoppius, Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Annaeus Bulmanus, Erycius Puteanus, and a few years ago, Fortunio Licetus. For all of these, in separate books destined for that purpose, encompassed the history of their own labors. To pass over others who also kept an account of their own books, although with less apparatus, and more often with a bare index or a letter written to a friend on this matter—as did Porta, Taurellus, Bellaius, Tomasini, Champierius, Severius, Novarinus, Canevarius, Durastantes, Francesco Mirandulanus, and so many others—so that there is more testimony and examples for Cardano than could be needed to repel the weapons of envious men from this labor of his on the history of his own works.

Indeed, they should rather be suffused with shame for accusing a man supported by so many illustrious authors, as if he could show no one favoring him, and as if he lacked witnesses and authority, just as they themselves lack reason. That, furthermore, provided a great opportunity for the rivals of Cardano, and especially for the sworn enemies of Astrology, to insult him more freely, because he observed almost none of these events which later followed, neither in his own natal chart, nor in that of his son Giovan Battista, nor of Aymar Ranconet, or Edward VI, King of England, and other proposed charts. For he did not predict for himself the prison, the noose for his son, the violent death for Ranconet, the short life for Edward, but rather results directly contrary. About which matter, since he already had to endure mockery from Joseph Scaliger, and later also from Alexander de Angelis, who by this reason most of all strives to tear down astrological divinations from the roots, there is no need here to linger longer on rolling the same stone a reference to the myth of Sisyphus.

That rather must be examined: how it can be that the princes of astrology, instructed by so many rules, taught by so many observations—so that there is nothing in the art so obscure, difficult, or hidden that they have not made accessible to themselves—scarcely ever use that success in their predictions with which we see, for the most part, delirious old women, withered elders, inept and foolish men, penetrating more certainly into future and hidden things. For what Alexander de Angelis imputes specifically to Cardano, as if he were the greatest restorer of astrological vanity, that must be said all the more of the middling and pot-licking astrologers. And I remember having seen in Italy certain annual Ephemerides of Luca Gaurico, in which, for the liberty of writing that prevailed at that time, he threatened every European prince with the greatest happiness or the most grievous losses, yet nothing later turned out as he himself had predicted it would. And I wish that Henry II, whom he had said would concede to fate only in extreme old age and with a very peaceful illness, had not been snatched from us in the prime of his age, and by such a bitter and precipitous fate. But on the contrary, the common prophets—the Frenchman Michael Nostradamus, the Italian Savonarola, the English Merlin the Caledonian, the German Lollard and Joachim, and finally the Portuguese Bandarra the Cobbler—indeed, many old women everywhere in nations, and men, as I was saying before, ignorant not only of astrology but of letters entirely, have had such certain premonitions of future things that

The Pythia, who speaks from the tripod and the laurel of Phoebus,
pronounces upon them more happily and more confidently.