Hyginus' Book of Fables and Poetic Astronomy

...and you have long been engaged and exercised in good letters with such care and diligence that, as far as true and solid virtue is concerned, you have acquired all of it for yourself through your own labor and study. You have obtained even greater praise from this matter because you chose to admire and pursue the labor of learning—which most men of your rank avoid and flee, whether through contempt or even a certain sloth—and, which we rarely see happen in this age, you have joined highest learning with highest lineage. Moreover, just as the splendor and harmony of colors adds not a little grace to excellent paintings, and in a way makes the entire subject and the skill of the artist more illustrious, so we also see virtue itself: if it is joined with the nobility of lineage and life, and illuminated by those external gifts of fortune, I know not how it seems simultaneously more excellent and more admirable. For I do not think we should listen to those Stoics who contend that, just as virtue is to be viewed as naked and in itself, so external fortune not only contributes nothing to the acquisition of virtue, but often even harms it and for that reason should be rejected. Just as their doctrine was long ago refuted and exploded by Aristotle and certain others, so it seems to me certainly—or rather, we learn it daily by examples—that where each of these has been joined and associated with the other, that is, virtue with fortune, something remarkable and singular shines forth, and then at last that eudaimonia happiness/flourishing which we seek in this life is, in all its parts, complete and full. Therefore, when last year I reread the Genealogies of the Gods, just as they had been collected some years ago by Boccaccio, and had given them to be printed, corrected from the countless errors with which the prior edition was wrapped and overwhelmed, and he [the printer] recently gave me another old, handwritten manuscript to examine—in which the same matter and argument were treated by Hyginus (for that was how the book was inscribed)—to be corrected and restored as much as possible, I, who had expended no small or contemptible part of my labor on that work, and saw that that book, such as it was, [could be of use] to diligent students...