PREFACE BY ERASMUS STELLA LIBONOTHANUS

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE FREDERICK,

GRAND MASTER OF THE SACRED TEUTONIC ORDER OF THE HOLY VIRGIN,

DUKE OF SAXONY, LANDGRAVE OF THURINGIA, AND MARGRAVE OF MEISSEN,

ON THE ANTIQUITIES OF PRUSSIA.

ALTHOUGH I FEAR, PRINCE FREDERICK, that in intending to seek out Prussian matters from the depths and their very first origin, and in bringing into the theater and onto the stage antiquity which until now has remained hidden—as if from a cage—I shall encounter the laughter, derision, sneers, and finally the hooting of the reading crowd rather than their applause, both because antiquity carries this with it, as Aristotle asserts in his Problems, that it seems to narrate things very similar to old wives' tales, and because Prussian affairs, through long-standing barbarism, lacking any written monuments, are considered to have been abandoned to a kind of perpetual darkness and submerged in the very river of Lethe, and are thought to have become so hardened that, even when stirred by the heat of Phoebus, they can scarcely be warmed enough to admit light and sun once more. But while these babblers see your Highness, the Agonotheta [master of the games] of that contest, in the orchestra...