Series atque ordo consulum reipub. Tigurinae a Rodolpho Brunone usque ad tempora nostra

...darkness of ignorance. Indeed, I have not yet been able to track down more than these thirty-six Consuls, who, it is beyond controversy, excelled others not so much by the nobility of their birth and the images of their ancestors, but by their piety, justice, and equity. But if anyone wishes to commit their principal deeds, sayings, and counsels to verse, he would seem to me to be undertaking a task longer than the Iliad. As for myself, I confess that a very meager talent has been granted to me; therefore, I add only a quatrain for each Consul, so that I may not appear, according to the common proverb, to have stepped beyond my own borders. Moreover, our poems, although they do not emanate from the Caballine fountain The Hippocrene, the fountain of the Muses (about which the poets fable) and are not adorned with the allure of words, will nevertheless (I hope) not be ungrateful or unpleasant to the candid reader, if he considers my intention and the difficulty of the subject. For since a man is not born for himself alone, but after God, primarily for his country, to whose benefits he is most obligated while he lives in these lands: who, I ask, will count it as a fault in me that I have tried with all my might to hand down to memory the names of the strongest and most famous men? For which of them would have hesitated to meet death for their country, if he were to be of use to it? Therefore, let these things said about the present undertaking suffice, etc. Now, however, I call upon you, most distinguished man and father, most to be observed, and I propose this my labor for you to read and judge before it comes into the light. Partly because I know you are not so averse to the Muses that you do not occasionally relax your mind with such studies...