M. Vitruvii Pollionis ... De architectura libri. X. ad Augustum Caesarem accuratissime conscripti, & locis quamplurimis hac editione emendati

We also restored the Greek words, as much as was permitted. Nor do I profess that everything has been purified, for we did not dare to change recklessly where certain truth did not stand for us: even if we conjectured that an error sometimes lay beneath. Since, however, the figures or schemata diagrams bring the greatest aid to the explanation of a matter so difficult and obscure, the ancients have been returned much more elegantly than the Florentine ones: to which more or less sixty new ones have been added by Philander himself, with not dissimilar art and charm. To these have been added the Castigations, or Annotations if you wish to call them that, of that most famous and learned man, GULIELMUS PHILANDER, who, by a new example, has illustrated matters involved in the densest darkness, so that Vitruvius, as if dressed in a new garment, dares to come into the assembly of learned men. We have joined the Greek index of both Authors in such a way that the one can still be distinguished from the other by a peculiar sign. The same has been done in the Latin one, which we nevertheless hand down to students much more comprehensively than the previous edition: as the matter itself will declare to those comparing both. The authors whom Philander either cited or invoked having been cited by others, we have placed after the Dialogue of Cusanus. Finally, we have relegated Julius Frontinus and the dialogue of Nicolaus Cusanus on Static Experiments to the end of the book, because they seemed to agree most aptly with the subject matter of Vitruvius. I only wanted the Reader to be warned of this much: that the Titles inscribed on the diagrams have been borrowed from the Italian version: for they are not Vitruvius's. The words which Ioannes Iucundus either replaced or added, we have left, but included in these marks bracket symbols, by which they might be distinguished. Now I ask from learned Readers that they favor our diligence: and if in any place there has been a slight mistake, they should forgive it.