PREFACE

TO THE READER.

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Mercury symbol (☿) in the left margin.
AMONG the ancients, kind reader, there exists a most beautiful allegory, which Ovid describes gracefully in book 2 of the Metamorphoses Transformations, on this subject: When Apollo was pasturing the herds of King Admetus, Mercury stole certain cows that had wandered too far and hid them in a forest. He ordered a certain Battus, a guardian of the waters—the only one who had seen him—not to reveal that theft to anyone; and so that he might do this more willingly, he gave him a cow as a gift. But Mercury, leaving, in order to test the faith of the man, returned to him a little later in a different form, asking whether he had seen certain cows passing through there, promising that, if he would indicate them, he would give him a cow with a bull.

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