THOME VENATORII

solid and stable, firmly resting in any direction it may fall, because it has length, breadth, and depth. And concerning all these things, I ask, who has handed them down more learnedly, or more accurately, or more diligently than this our Archimedes? Today there are not a few who follow these studies with great honor and are considered worthy of having statues erected to the immortal memory of their studies. Our own age has especially seen such men: Ioannes Stofflerus the Swabian, Ioannes Schoenerus of Karlstadt, a friend and uniquely beloved teacher to me in mathematical studies; also Bilibaldus Pyrkheymerus, a man most expert in undertaking illustrious deeds; and Simon Grynaeus, who was removed from human cares a little before these times, a man equally learned and pious, to whom only this one thing was missing: that in such great knowledge of divine and human things, he was not at all puffed up. I also think Christianus Herlinus of Strasbourg, a mathematician and a man of great learning, should be celebrated in this place, and rightfully so, for not only students of the liberal arts but also the spirit of our Archimedes himself owes much to him, because he spent no small effort on these books so that they might appear both more corrected and illustrated with elegant type. Philippus Melanchthon, today a defender of purer literature and more rigorous philosophy, along with Ioachimus Camerarius of Franconia, and also my fellow citizen Ioachimus Rheticus, what wholesome work do they not expend so that proper studies may diffuse their fragrance as widely as possible? Of our kinsman Achilles P., a student of recondite arts, and in truth more skilled in Astrology and Medicine than can be said, I will speak more sparingly here, because I know him to be too modest to wish to acknowledge any of our praises for himself, although he is otherwise worthy of the greatest praise. As for Ioannes à Regiomonte, just as nature once placed him outside the common lot of mortals, so you might dare to doubt whether this world has had a greater man in mathematical disciplines in the past few centuries. While staying in Rome, shortly after the city of Constantinople was captured and most cruelly plundered by the Turks, when scholarly literature was brought to Italy under good auspices, as if saved from flight and storm, he—I say—willingly obeying his first calling to Italy, just as he obtained the most ample fame for his name, so he both saw many Greek books snatched from the Constantinopolitan slaughter and described not a few with his own hands. Among other things, however, the books of Archimedes—on the sphere and cylinder, on the measurement of the circle, and on other things not so much useful as necessary for the race of mortals, just as it is open to read in those books which Iacobus Cremonensis, a man worthy of double honor in that age, both because he was learned in Greek and because, aided by the commerce of languages, he alone seemed able to finish this work, had made Latin for the favor of the Roman Pontiff Nicolaus V—he most diligently described what was offered to him by friends, often adding in the margins the Greek (which had been the case of the Greek codices if he had had the abundance) if any things seemed to be translated too harshly or described not very intelligently.