Elements of Astronomy (Alfraganus)

himself, having been offered a field as broad as it was beautiful, in which he might pour out the wealth of his exotic scholarship and erect a monument more lasting than bronze a reference to Horace, Odes 3.30.1: "exegi monumentum aere perennius". Nor, as far as public and private occupations allowed, was he lacking in the work he had begun; deeming it his crowning achievement that he should present nothing that was poorly finished, or unworthy of so worthy an author. But in truth, just as the arduous hopes of men are generally subject to unexpected and undesired fortune, before he could finish weaving the proposed fabric, behold, the envious Fate the Parcae, or Fates of Roman mythology hastened to sever the thread of his life. Thus, having finished the span of his living before the business of his writing, he left behind an imperfect work, to the great grief and longing of the Republic of Letters. Meanwhile, lest these lucubrations themselves, which by their merit are most worthy of the light, should be plunged into unworthy darkness and buried along with their author, but rather that they might assert the immortal fame of this most deserving man along with the other works he gave to the public, and lest the learned world be deprived of so distinguished an ornament—which would not be easily replaced—by a grief and mourning doubled, it was judged proper that the NOTES of Golius themselves (or that portion of them which the Fates allowed) be joined to the work of Alfraganus by a faithful hand and communicated for public use; with this hope and prayer, if perhaps someday another GOLIUS might arise