... Epitome troporum ac schematum et grammaticorum & rhetorum, ad authores tum prophanos tum sacros intelligendos non minus utilis quam necessaria

...and that you might have formulas for writing and speaking, which it would be permitted to imitate by constant use. Moreover, because except for Mosellanus’s tables there was nothing of Tropes and Figures in your hands, having found leisure from the literary school during that time (when that unbridled youth, in this most lost century, wearing masks throughout the whole town, as if driven by the gadfly of Isis or agitated by the furies of the underworld, ran up and down, offering sacrifice to Bacchus and Venus not very honestly, and were vigorously occupied with the remaining more than Ethnic, not to say impious, rites; and [when] it was not permitted to me, due to a catarrh καταρρέοντα flowing down, to go to more liberal and public, and indeed honest, banquets of honest men—banquets thus far accepted among us for such Bacchic customs;) at that time, I say, in order to digest the weariness of it, it seemed good to collect into this Epitome the Tropes and Figures, which are in more frequent use among Poets, Historians, and Rhetoricians, from selected authors: in order that I might provide for you in this part, just as in Grammar, and offer a handle and show the way to the reading of these authors from whom this Epitome has been excerpted. In which, indeed, this order (which Philip Melanchthon, a man of mild and charming eloquence, seems to have been the first to touch upon) has been observed by me. For in the first place, we have placed the Tropes, both of words and of speech, then the Figures, which are themselves divided into Grammar and Rhetoric, then Grammar again into Orthography...

A periphrasis of the Bacchanalia.

Comparison and homoeoteleuton.

Epanalepsis.

Homoeoteleuton.

The order of things to be said.

...and furthermore... of syntax... [I] teach... that which... name... oration... called... it is better to say... [for you] students... [with a] benevolent [mind]... read, [for] writing... (as [I have] explained)... [from] obscurity...