Francisci Porti Cretensis... In omnes Sophoclis tragoedias prolegomena, ut vulgo vocantur

EPISTLE.

is preparing what is required for the work to be done, we have decided that these [writings], which could be completed easily, quickly, and without great expense, should be printed as a sort of specimen of the others, and dedicated to your name, especially since you can rightfully claim for yourself the prolegomena introductory remarks to the tragedies of Sophocles. For my father, as I have signified to you by letter long ago, when he was about to commend his soul to God and fly from the prison of the human body to the heavens above, mindful of the friendship which consistently existed between him and you to the highest degree, and also mindful of the services which you often rendered to him, bequeathed his Sophocles to you, with his own commentaries written in his own hand, so that you might have a sure and perpetual monument of the man who loved and honored you greatly. Indeed, the son has faithfully executed what the father commanded, and has given you the thing owed and bequeathed. But because he had written these while his father was teaching to an audience of public lectures, and he feared that, if anything human should befall him a reference to death, they might fall into alien hands, and another might sell labors not his own as his own, or driven by the goads of envy might suppress and thus destroy them, and also because he believed that no small fruits would be perceived from these by students of letters, he therefore ordered them to be sent to the press.

To these he added a paraskeue preparation for the oration of Demosthenes On the False Embassy. He also joined six Latin Orations. I know, most learned sir, I know this little gift is