Medical Compositions

and fire everything was laid waste: and for such a disaster, apart from walls and ruins, and what is most to be lamented, the truncated marbles of envious artistry, nothing of Roman greatness remains today. Yet, by a singular fate, and not without the providence of the Divine, not a few monuments of talent escaped hostile hands, which, having been variously plundered and hidden, ascribe life to the piety of those by whose zeal they were able to return to view from squalor and neglect. Not the least part of this happiness seems to be attributed to the skill of the previous age, by which, through the compendium of immense labor, writings once known to few are sooner or later made public property. Through the industry of Galen, Scribonius had raised his head from the ancient crowd of physicians. In the long course of time, he was dug out from his hiding places in Gaul and returned to Italy and the world. But he experienced the varied fortune of antiquity and was not held in sufficient integrity. Yet, he was so pleasing to more refined minds that for over a century he has been in esteem among those who do not despise blemishes even in a beautiful body: although it was in the interest not so much of them as of posterity that he should appear in an amended state; so that one cannot wonder enough that among the frequent number of scholars, no one until now has seriously applied their hands to him. Perhaps the slightness of the work and the esteem for the Greeks stood in the way of his fame: to whom, however, he himself more than once shone forth. He indeed owes his birth to a Gaul, but now his condition and cultivation, as is the way of things, he owes to one from that nation whose power, terrible to both Hesperias likely referring to the East and West, or Italy and Spain, has almost stood last for the Muses and letters; except that now, under your auspices, Most August Prince, they revive, just as the same people impute this to their own happiness, because they are refreshed by your clemency. Therefore, not rashly nor untimely does Scribonius knock at your royal thresholds, from which formerly to the Prince