A decorative horizontal header consisting of a repeating pattern of stylized fleurons or floral ornaments.

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE

LOUIS DE VALOIS

COUNT OF ALAIS.

original: "ETUPATTEIN." This is a Latinization of the Greek greeting "eu prattein" (εὖ πράττειν), meaning to fare well or prosper.

MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE,

I have undertaken to present the most noble works of those great men produced by ancient ages, contracted into a single synopsis for the benefit of all students. I wished to dedicate these to your name for several reasons, but especially because I have known you to be greatly delighted by those sciences which offer nothing disguised, nothing unstable, and nothing except the truth, and which hate a lie above all else.
Mersenne is referring to the mathematical sciences, which were valued in the seventeenth century for their logical certainty compared to the more speculative philosophy of the time.

Judge, therefore, GREAT PRINCE, that in this volume the distinguished talents of Greece, Italy, and France go to greet you by mutual consent. Let Archimedes lead the way, noble by the blood of the Kings of Syracuse, who offers you his never-sufficiently-praised work on the sphere and the cylinder; let him have as companions the other Greeks: Theodosius, Apollonius, Pappus, and others. Also the Italians Commandino and Valerio; Snellius, Ste—
Mersenne lists the giants of geometry. Archimedes (3rd century BCE) was the most famous mathematician of antiquity. Theodosius, Apollonius, and Pappus were later Greek mathematicians. Federico Commandino and Luca Valerio were influential Italian mathematicians of the 16th century. Willebrord Snellius was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician. "Ste—" likely refers to the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin.