A horizontal decorative border at the top of the page features repeating ornate scrollwork and floral motifs.

GREETINGS TO THE READERS!

After it was reported to certain Prince-Electors that this work was being prepared by me, FRIENDLY READER, many of them promised to provide images of their courts, gardens, villas, fountains, and palaces. These were to be produced at their own expense by the hands of the best artists. I would then take care to have them engraved in copper at my own expense and published together with the rest.

I always desire that my readiness to serve be approved by everyone. Therefore, I have decided that once the number of these collected designs has grown to a notable size, I will publish them. Some of these are already kept at my home for the sake of certain nobles. I will arrange them in the same format as this present treatise.

I wish to offer my service again to each and every person who cultivates these matters. I solemnly promise to ensure that everything brought to me will be engraved as diligently as possible according to the original models. These will be published in a following book in the near future. Meanwhile, I devotedly commend us all to the divine gaze.

The Translator to the same Reader.

You have here a work, FRIENDLY READER, which is highly commendable for its subject matter and contents. In the first part, you will find refutations of the ancient philosophers and various demonstrations. If you find a lack of precision original: "akribeian" (Greek), meaning exactness or meticulous attention to detail or if you desire more order and method in the rest, I ask one thing of you. Please remember that I am the translator, not the author. My work might have been more pleasing to you if the hurried bookseller referring to the publisher, Paul Fürst had permitted anything else. He only desired that what was written in the common tongue original: "vernaculo idiomate," referring to the original German edition should also be available to read in Latin.