INTRODUCTION

BY ALESSANDRO GIORGI

TO THE SPIRITUALS original: "Spiritali" OF HERO.

It is impossible to consider without great wonder how some most noble arts, having once been in the highest esteem in the world, have since been reduced to such a decline that for some time their memory has barely been kept alive. Some have attributed the cause of this to the negligence and carelessness of men who, having allowed themselves to be lured beyond measure by the delight of apparent things, have not raised their intellect to the knowledge of invisible ones. Others have attributed this to the course of the stars; others have thought it proceeded from a certain instability, proper to all human things, which does not permit them to remain in the same state for very long. But whatever the truth may be, it suffices that this variable turn of events has notably exercised its forces upon the Mathematical arts as well. These, no sooner born, grew in a short space of time into such esteem that, by the common opinion of all, no one could earn praise for a noble intellect—nor even be admitted into the most famous academies of learned Greece, which was at that time the school of the whole world—who did not have more than a mediocre knowledge of them. And after some interval, as if that had been the supreme goal of their natural progress, they declined in such a way that they were in danger of remaining buried in perpetual oblivion. Having remained in this unworthy state for some time, they finally began years ago to rise again, once more walking swiftly toward greatness and excellence, where they have nonetheless continued to advance further. And there have been, and are, many gifted with a rare intellect who have spent their study on them: some rendering light to the works of the ancients with commentaries and annotations; others composing new ones; and others transporting them from