PREFACE

TO THE READER.

An ornamental woodcut headpiece featuring two winged figures (putti) seated among symmetrical scrolling acanthus leaves and floral motifs, flanking a central decorative mask.

A large decorative drop cap 'A' featuring ornate floral scrollwork inside a rectangular frame.

Among the ancients, Candid Reader, there exists a most beautiful allegory, which Ovid describes charmingly in book 2 of his Metamorphoses, of this subject: When Apollo was pasturing the flocks of King Admetus, Mercury stole certain cattle that had wandered too far and hid them in a forest. He commanded a certain Battus, a guardian of the waters who alone had seen him, not to tell anyone of that theft; and so that he might do this more willingly, he gave him a cow as a gift. But Mercury, departing, in order to test the man's fidelity, took on another form and returned a little later, asking him if he had seen certain cows passing through there, promising that, if he would point them out, he would give him a cow with a bull. Battus, therefore, corrupted by the hope of a reward:

He said, "They were in the mountains, and they were under those mountains;"

Indicating where they were grazing; for which treachery Mercury changed him into the stone which is found in crossroads, placed there as an Index signpost/indicator. But what the ancients intended by the cattle, or even by