On the Antiquities of Prussia

...showing themselves off, they greet you as their fortunate governor, and venerate you as the father of the fatherland. And whatever they have seen transformed into a more prosperous lot and a more splendid appearance—as if almost every single thing—they attribute all of it to you and to the sacred knighthood, of which you are the master, or rather, the perpetual dictator. But if there are those who surround you and have looked upon these unformed and rough images of Prussia with stern eyes, and have deemed them worthy of being driven away because they were brought into this most august assembly without more refined cultivation and almost unclothed, let this be the response to them: that pigments and dyes do not become an honest woman, nor will an oration that reeks too much of ointments hold any credibility. We leave it to the writers of panegyrics to narrate whatever is more pleasing than true. In these little commentaries, we have set forth the antiquities of Prussia without deceit, having put aside all ornamental display of speech. So that if there should be any in the future who desire Prussian affairs in a more polished style, they may take from here what they wish to be adorned. For this bare speech will easily endure whatever cultivation anyone might impose upon it. But so that these little commentaries of ours, although filled with antiquity and decay, might possess credibility without dross, I guarantee that they have been worked out from the most distinguished writers of history: namely, Pliny, Solinus, Pomponius Mela, Cornelius Tacitus, Strabo, and Ptolemy; and from the moderns, Gordano, who first committed the affairs of the Goths to writing; our Albertus Magnus, who visited and traveled through these lands; and Otho, Bishop of Freising, who wrote five...