M. Vitruvius per Iocundum solito castigatior factus cum figuris et tabula ut iam legi et intelligi possit

TO THE MOST BLESSED JULIUS II, SUPREME PONTIFF: BROTHER JO. IOCUNDUS, H.S.C.

The studies and labors which I exhausted in restoring Vitruvius to the standard of his original reading: and which I thought would be pleasing to you: I decided not without reason to dedicate to your name, greatest Pontiff, as the monarch of the entire human race: since you alone are the one who acts on earth in place of the best and greatest God: and who, in all stages of your age, have shown by the greatness of your spirit how many and how numerous are the virtues in which you excel: and by your deeds, not only established at the height of the supreme pontificate, but even from the very beginnings of your life, the most happy outcomes prove how strong you were, and with how much genius and skill you have been endowed in all your actions. It seemed right to me, therefore, to dedicate this judgment of my mind and love to studies of architecture of this kind, in which you take great pleasure: as the monuments of your most ample and magnificent expenditures on finishing buildings declare among your other greatest virtues. For in these, as in many other things, you have surpassed not only the princes of our age, but also those of the past, in both number and magnificence. And lest an adulatory invention of this praise of yours be attributed to me, let witnesses of the truth come forward. For the works exist. Let one seek who equals the number, or who is second, or who has made greater or more magnificent things, whose fame (like yours) can extend to the ends of the ages. Receive therefore with a calm countenance, most blessed Father, the labors I dedicate to you in restoring this author: and do not think them to have been small, since (so that I might understand) it is known that I compared his words and sense, with the remains of ruins and ancient buildings, not once, but often and numerous times. But even this (so great was my care for this matter) would have seemed little, if we had possessed the complete reading of the author himself: because I found it almost entirely corrupted: and I found no one who was studious, or who had taken upon himself the burden of correcting it, or who had penetrated to its perfect understanding. Diligently, through my own study, while I began to examine each part, I turned to ancient examples as if to a handle for discerning the matter: and not to a few, nor found in one region or city only, but in many. And so, intent upon a double study, namely the monuments of ancient ruins, and books redolent of the situation of antiquity, I made for myself a path of understanding that lay open to the fates: and from the diverse reading it happened that, from one or another codex, how many corrected places I found, or how they showed the way to correcting: and where these did not help, they remained exactly as they were. I wanted this to be known, so that those who "seek a knot in a bulrush" a classical proverb meaning to find difficulties where there are none might not criticize me, because I am one who boasts of having restored the pristine reading of the author to perfection. For I neither promised this, nor do I know myself to be capable, since there are some things written in it in which I am still stuck, and in which I neither believe myself, nor know whether the words and their texture are sound or corrupted.