TO THE READER

A large decorative woodcut initial 'E' features foliate and floral ornaments on a hatched background.

Behold, friendly reader, the Art which neither the ancient Romans, once the masters of nations—famous throughout the world for their knowledge of war and the invention and use of military weapons—nor the Greeks—famous in every kind of noble art and easily the leaders among other contemporary peoples for this reason—ever knew. I do not repeat the earlier times: those golden ages, surely, ignorant not only of weapons and warfare but even of malice, of which the poet sang:

Not yet did steep trenches surround towns,
Nor trumpet, nor curved horns of bronze,
Neither helmets, nor sword existed; without the use of a soldier,
Gentle peoples passed their secure leisure.

In the age that followed, which was worse, as avarice, ambition, and malice grew daily and contended with integrity and innocent simplicity, warfare was born. This did not beget war, but rather a beast, as it were, horrific and hostile to the entire human race. Hence, the call to arms. But these things were at first very simple: namely, not those which art or genius had suggested, but which nature itself had suggested, either for the defense of oneself or for the offense of another. Therefore, they began the origins of war with biting, fists, kicking, and the wrestling of bodies. Yet immediately, as heat occupied the limbs, Mars, seething, incited warriors to seize more effective weapons, better suited for shedding the blood of enemies. You would have seen, in that time, some straining with great effort to tear trees out by the roots; others breaking larger branches; and, with poles and clubs prepared, rushing at the enemy. Others took smaller, more flexible twigs, bent into a bow, with the ends bound across with linden bark, and adapted sharper and straighter shoots, releasing them without any art, aiming uncertainly. Some threw stones by hand at closer ranges, and others threw them at greater distances, inserted into slings. Hence the origin of bows, arrows, and slings flowed. Those who were invaded by the fear of death and wounds covered their heads and chests with bark stripped from trees by biting or with snakeskins. Hence helmets and breastplates appeared. But just as every form of malice is ingenious, so too the inventions of warfare grew daily from the depraved genius of the wicked, to the common evil of all. For, after a few years had passed, weapons were sought in the bowels of the earth; veins of iron were detected; the smith’s art was established; weapon workshops were prepared; swords were forged; spears were armed with points; arrows were armed with barbs; clubs and flails were iron-tipped; armor, helmets, shields, and all similar equipment of war were manufactured. Then those who devised such things, and learned to use them by frequent practice, were more formidable than others who were ruder. But nature taught the timid to fortify themselves with ramparts and fortresses to ward off the incursions and assaults of the stronger. Hence the first rudiments of Military Architecture. Yet not even so were those wretches safe, hiding within the enclosures of walls and ramparts; for the furious, whom both the madness of war and the love of possession incited, meditating nothing but violence, easily found weapons and machines to break through and demolish even such hiding places. They ran immediately to the woods, and having felled enormous trees, made destructive machines, which strong youths, and more numerous, sustaining them with hands and arms, attempted to break the resisting barriers by the reciprocation of blows. From this resemblance, the name of a ram was bestowed upon them. Some, who were skilled in ingenuity, prepared scaling instruments; others prepared things with which they might injure enemies from afar, and balance huge weights, and javelins. Then, for the first time, the world saw ladders, sambucae siege ladders/ships, ballistae, catapults, scorpions—who could enumerate the rest? There were also found some who prepared fires and flaming projectiles, as that crude and untaught age had instructed, to be aimed at the enemy; and such things were then called torches, fire-bolts, or phalaricae incendiary spears, or otherwise named; and these were, as it were, certain preludes to our Pyrotechnics. But to return to where we digressed, if we wish to search for the names of those who were the first inventors of such machines and artificial weapons, we shall surely labor in vain: for we shall be able to extract nothing certain about that matter from the monuments of the ancients; but neither are those things for this place.