Vitruvius iterum et Frontinus à Iocundo revisi repurgatique quantum ex collatione licuit

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Virtues, both liberal and mechanical, flourish and are perfected the more they are practiced by those who are captivated by their delights, and who pursue them with tireless and skillful study. Such is what I hear of you, Iuliano de' Medici, excellent man and most devoted student of these arts, whose fame is widespread. You do not degenerate from the excellent nature and great virtues bequeathed by your father and ancestors. For who is unaware of the most famous family of the Medici original: "medicorum", which has been most splendid in every age through so many and such famous leading men? Even if, because of various and adverse circumstances of fate in your youth, you did not perceive your own splendor, you have been increased by the wonderful dignity of God, so that even your brother, while not yet forty years of age, was given to our Christian religion as Supreme Pontiff The Pope. He surpassed the rank and dignity of kings and emperors, to which not simoniacal depravity—as happens to many others—not frauds, not immoderate ambition raised him, but the integrity of his life, the holiness of his morals, and the sincere fame of his virtues. These things bind spirits with such charity that we are compelled to love and venerate even those we have not known and whose faces we have never seen. As recently happened to me, when I had heard many things worthy of a man of your stature—as I said—and spread abroad with the highest praises, I did not hesitate to dedicate to you the records of some of my labors concerning the studies and writings of Vitruvius. When I understood that these were to be submitted under my name for a second printing, I did not think they should be passed over negligently. I decided to revise them, to make them better, and to add to the treasures of your studies, since he to whom the dedication of the first printing—which seems preserved for you by the will of God—was to be entrusted, had departed from life before he could see the work itself completed. Accept, therefore, these tokens of my love and veneration for your spirit.