Michaelis Maieri viatorium, hoc est, de montibus planetarum septem, seu metallorum

PREFACE

He boasted with empty zeal in the mountains and woods,
or he pursued Narcissus in vain, just as the nymph Echo, who, while she responds to the voices of all, hoping that she might now possess her desired love, was reduced to pathless places and the wasting away of her body, lost hope along with substance, and retained nothing except an empty VOICE without a body. Very many, while they offered themselves for the love of their fatherland (as the youths of the Athenians once did) to struggle with the Minotaur (the philosophical matter), apart from the immediate dangers threatening them from the monster, fell into inextricable Labyrinths. Of these, so that the reason for the name and the arrangement might be better recognized, it is said that in ancient centuries there were four: the Egyptian, the Cretan, the Lemnian, and the Italian, and of these the first two are the most famous, mentioned by various writers.
Concerning the Cretan, Virgil says thus in book 5 of the Aeneid:
As once in high Crete, the Labyrinth is said