Secret of Secrets

Neither shall I wrap in silence, most diligent reader, the fact—lest you be disturbed—that you will find this edition of ours differing from previous ones in nearly two hundred places. Know, however, that this was done by us not rashly, but with intent; for that this edition of ours might be considered most brilliant, we labored not only to apply the principles of orthography that were desired in others, and to add certain annotations occurring according to the demands of the passages, but we also followed the fidelity of ancient copies and corrected the vulgate in all places where we judged it either false or less pure than a reading taken from the most ancient manuscripts. Would that we had possessed ancient copies for all the chapters of the book, for it would have appeared even more emended in many places.

What has been accomplished by us in the three annexed short works. The ninth.

To this Secret of Secrets we have annexed three treatises, the first of which is on the wonders of India; which, just as it is most pleasant to read, so it is also most corrupted in its reading—which can easily be shown by one example: the Tree of the Moon, answering Alexander, predicts that he will die in the following year, in the ninth month. The Tree of the Sun, however, affirms that this will happen in a year and seven months; which should be attributed not to the inconsistency of the oracle or the author, but to the carelessness of some scribe.