THOME VENATORII

it seemed to weaken them. If our life is not cultivated by literature, what else should it be considered than a certain barbaric savagery? Certainly, for a man who strives toward immortality, there is no possession more certain or more secure than the study of the liberal arts: since this is the only possession that inflames the soul with a love for solid virtue, and because those who used it from the beginning, as the Wise Man truly says, became participants in the friendship of God. But you, Conscript Fathers Latin: "P.C." (Patres Conscripti), a term for Senators., how rightly you desire the welfare of the Republic of Letters is abundantly testified by so many subsidies of your liberality bestowed everywhere upon students. And the study of philosophy is held in great esteem among you; furthermore, you hold in even greater honor those authors who have written on the Mathematical sciences, for the very reason that you are accustomed to count the knowledge of mathematical things among the most beautiful and useful parts of philosophy. Thus, from this, you not only derive great utility privately, but you have often appeared to gain, publicly, the highest favor among foreigners and learned men of these matters. Your Senatorial order has always possessed such men who were either students of the most beautiful arts or, at the very least, whose spirit was not entirely abhorrent to proper studies. Since this praise carries its own honesty, it cannot but be most beautiful. As for you, who today hold the helm of the Republic, I cannot express in a few words what I wish to say; therefore, you ought to kindly accept this Archimedes the Sicilian, dedicated to you by me, who is, in the judgment of all learned men, the prince of the mathematical disciplines. For with this one reborn, the whole of Mathematics may seem to be reborn. Hitherto, there has been nothing more celebrated in mathematical writings than the name of Archimedes. But who will you show me who has truly seen with his own eyes the monuments of such an author? Bilibaldus Pirckheymerus, whom you did not hesitate to name the most learned among the learned while he lived, that man—I say—as he was a man of excellent genius, when he had finally received, after long expectation, a Greek copy of our Archimedes written in Rome, through the efforts of a certain friend, not only suffered him to dwell in his house as if he were some common guest, but wished him to be a companion to his daily habit of study. He surely did not ignore that this kind of study had once been most religiously cultivated and celebrated by the very highest rulers of kingdoms, and those wisest men. Book 7. Hence, Plato, the light of philosophers, writing in his books On Laws, dares to teach in his own way that Geometry (to pass over other things) should be learned by free men. Following him, M. Fabius Quintilianus thought this same discipline was not so much useful as even necessary for a future Orator. Therefore, I thought I would be doing a pleasant thing if I brought forth to the day, under your auspices, that author who alone seemed to be missing for the completion of mathematical perfections. Moreover, because of the modesty inherent in your souls, you will not take it ill if I desire the ultimate fruits of this edition to come to all cultivators of good studies, while the praise itself moves to you alone.