Although all of philosophy (which all learned men rightly call not just the inventor of all honored arts and the investigator of nature and its mysteries, but moreover the teacher of virtue and praiseworthy deeds) contributes much of utility to mankind, yet no part appears more fruitful and of greater benefit than that part that discourses on duties and the morals of mankind, whence come wholesome precepts for living well, steadfastly, and with dignity. But since lessons of this sort, which incorporate virtues and a model of life in themselves, can be garnered from poets as well as from orators, I consider that both should be studied and accurately understood by those who are working to attain some degree of erudition and to conform their behavior to the rule of integrity and perfect existence. For with their inventions poets too

not seldom invite us by some secret means to enter on the path of virtue and desert the path of vice, setting forth marvelous tales as examples, as Ovid too in his Metamorphosis (quite apart from the continuous history which he pursues from the origin of the world to his own times, along with the secret knowledge of nature) shows and brings before our eyes as if with living pictures the singular favor and benevolence of God toward pious and temperate people, and conversely his terrifying wrath against the malignant, hardhearted, and insolent, so that by this means he can deter us from all turpitude and iniquity and induce us to lead our lives properly and happily.

But even as so wholesome and fruitful a knowledge is becoming for all well-bred, liberal minds, it is a distinction and ornament above all for the offspring of noble and eminent houses, and especially for those who seem born from a long, almost unbroken series of forbears, as if by a natural affinity, to govern the state, to be steeped in and shaped by these most useful precepts of philosophy from the tenderest age, so to speak, since these precepts are thought to have a great and momentous bearing on how states are governed.

And so, you most illustrious heroes, since this little work long awaited by many is finally being published, in which Ovid's Metamorphoses, like bright illustrations of the human condition, are all gathered as if in one bundle, I think I will be doing something worthwhile, or at any rate not wasting the fruits of my effort and labor completely, if I dedicate to you majesties these studies of mine, slight and immature though they may be, and (as many will doubtless regard them) unworthy of heroes with such an illustrious pedigree.

in summary, no striving to raise you according to the best institutes and precepts of philosophy. For to me it is eminently clear that you are endowed with such inborn goodness and such natural excellence that you will be spontaneously inclined toward the upright and praiseworthy, and will shun altogether everything not in keeping with honesty, and in all things will keenly observe the salubrious precepts of your tutor and others who offer good counsel.

And so less for the method and training it offers in how to live well than by way of displaying my humble devotion to your Excellencies do I hereby present, give, and dedicate this little work to you, and although you are worthy of a much finer gift, I beseech and implore you to receive this my slight little labor with kindness, and see fit to regard more the spirit and will of the giver than the little work taken per se. If you do grant me this, and (as I hope) I see that you take up this work with good grace for whatever it is worth, your goodwill, grace and favor will spur me to new undertakings, quite possibly greater ones. Whereupon, to your Eminences, o great heroes, I humbly

commend me, and I fervently pray God to keep you and and your whole most illustrious family in safety and health. Farewell [Valete]. Written in Heidelberg on the twenty-second of February, anno 1563.

   Your devoted
     well-wisher

       Johann Spreng
       of Augsburg.

Generous reader, among the other benefits God has bestowed on humankind through his singular grace and favor, to the judgment of all learned and right-thinking men it is clear that one notable gift is the preservation of histories comprising an orderly archive of past deeds and ancient exemplars. For I reckon that, for any number of reasons, no one so stupid as not to discern, even with no help from me, what an excellent treasure is the knowledge of times past, which brings out of darkness and murk into bright and clear view the beginning and progress of things, the propagation of divine worship, the origin of superstitions, the wonderful rule of the Church, the series and changes of governments, natural prodigies, and other things chiefly worth knowing. Thus it seems that not only is special praise due to all those who gave study and time to composing of histories, but in our

day, as well, we should not wholly scorn and contemn those who labor at this most appealing and useful variety of writing--whether authoring new texts or elucidating--and who willingly give it all their energy and mental intensity.

But as we rightly honor and celebrate both Greek and Latin historians who used straightforward, simple, and well-ordered prose to pass down to posterity and save from oblivion acts worthy remembrance which we need to know, so also we ought not to cheat poets of their deserved praise, who performed the same in their own genre. So since Ovid as well, in his volume of Metamorphoses, employed wondrous and singular artistry and ingenuity in composing the general history of the whole world to the era of Caesar Augustus, we ought not to imagine that people till now have been wasting their time and their effort and work on construing and expounding so noble an author. For the more choice and striking of all the ancient poets' fables (which derive from the actual truth of affairs) are comprised in this poem, as if all in one bundle; to the point it seems like an illustrious

shoulders, so that I sensed myself hardly equal to such a hard task, I could scarcely say nay; and whatever its scope, I have taken it on, working on it as hard as my own mental limits, the shortness of time and of other resources, and respite from other business allowed; but the method and scheme by which I did all this (so that the reader can navigate the book with more ease) I will briefly sum up.

First, the order and distribution of the fables was established according to the pictures and images included in a certain book published in Dutch; even if we might have introduced a more suitable basis for arranging them (since many metamorphoses that go well together are broken apart into two, three or more fables, and a few well deserving inclusion were simply left out), for the sake of those who first assigned me this task and who saw to engraving these images at no mean expense, it seemed better to keep to the scheme of the book aforementioned than to form a new canon of images.

Next, before every fable or metamorphosis I have purposely added an argument in easy, simple phrasing, so that any boy middlingly grounded in letters can grasp it, followed by a brief summary in elegiac verses according to

Ovid's example as far as one might; for I often deemed it safer and wiser to use the same phrasings and words than to form new expressions out of keeping with the simplicity of Ovid's own verse. Following the summary there comes finally an allegory or lesson, either serving moral edification and the leading of a good, happy life or else demonstrating the misery of the human condition and the transience of human affairs.

I have not indeed missed how many physical, astronomical, and other more recondite truths have been hidden beneath the veils [involucra] of these fables, but I deliberately turned the interpretation of almost all these fables to lessons with a bearing on living and human morality; yet some fables that seem in some way to converge with and virtually allude to the histories of sacred scripture, or expressly oppose them and underwrite heathen superstition, I have called back from the empty inventions and lies of the pagans to the truth of Christianity extracted from the New and Old Testaments, and have shown by analogy and correspondence what lesson a pious man may derive from the acts of

the Gentiles, how far he may emulate their rites; what, in sum, he should copy, and what he should shun.

But especially worth noting are human beings' transformations into cattle, wild beasts, rivers, stones, and other inanimate objects, lucidly illustrating the traits and conditions of mortal mankind. For all those who stray from virtue's track into a course of sin, who pollute themselves with foul passions, or indulge in dire pleasures, or fall victim to some other plague of vice, for as long as they persist in this shameful and miserable state of existence, without returning to health through Christ's grace and a moral purgation, since they live not a human but a bestial life, I maintain that in fact all of these before God are undoubtedly nothing but beasts out of their own right minds; nothing more than trunks, stumps, stones, and blocks, with hearts so obtuse, hardened, and (so to speak) calloused that by no divine threats, prayers, or orders or warnings can they be turned back to obedience, while they close their ears impudently to all of God's fruitful and healthful admonitions, and wish rather to perish in their sins than

return to a more wholesome lifestyle.

Anyone who thinks carefully about Ovid's fables will note these and many other lessons as if lurking hidden, tucked away in the depths. In this way, then, we ought to read poets as well as historians, so that the reading itself is undertaken not only to glean entertainment and pleasure, but rather to copy and imitate virtues and repudiate shameful behavior; for as music that merely strokes the ears with vain clamor and tinkling, without doing anything substantial to harmonize the soul, proffers only senseless pleasure, without any rational content or use, yielding only--to borrow the poet's words--"sound without sense" [Virgil, Aen. 10.640], so all knowledge of histories, however impressive and copious, without moral edification and the molding of life to the pattern of certain exempla, is a science merely vain and quite useless.

Thus this is the principal fruit to be garnered from histories and fables, to heighten our understanding and knowledge of those things that will aid us toward glory, immortality, and guiding all our actions toward furthering God's name and attaining the eternal prize of virtue as our

only goal and the most certain rule of salvation. And so it will result that, weighing the vicissitude and inconstancy of human affairs, we will manage to stand firm, reconciled and tolerant in adversity, moderate and restrained in prosperity, strong before sudden shocks, generous in abundance and affluence, in poor seasons content with our lot, brave in illness and in other difficulties, and in all states of life ruled within mediocrity's mean, since we cannot stand this side or that of it. On these threats and the like--that is, on Satan's impostures, with which he circumvents the unwary, on the battle of reason and the passions, in which mighty men often mightily struggle, and on the horrible sins in which most mankind wallows as if in the mud--bear our own allegories appended to each of the summaries, all which we leave the generous reader to judge as he will.

There is still one more point which we wish to recall at this juncture; that is, that the order of these fables does not always preserve the strict order of history or accurate temporal sequence. For what happened first is frequently told second, and what follows told first, in the manner of poetry, and in the order which such authors on their own

initiative see fit. I wished to bring this up in case anyone supposes that these fables are thrown together at random, arbitrarily; for with their own artistry, in a style of their own, poets insert history into their fictions with narrative insets, something quite clear from Homer, Virgil, and various other poets, by whose example ours, too, invented his Metamorphosis. But if anyone misses perfect narrative continuity and smoothness, let him read Naso's [Ovid's] work carefully one end to the other, and on top of rhetorical copia and remarkable brilliance of both words and figures he will note a remarkable and supremely well-crafted connection between all the fables.

I deemed fit to put this forth by way of a preface, which the generous reader will take in good part in accord with his fairness, and sincerely judge all; if in this little work he moreover finds anything faulty or slapdash or less than well-done, he will chalk it up partly to the time-limitations beneath which I labored, partly to the strict metrical regimen by which I was bound. For occasionally I was constrained to compress the longest histories of greatest extent into just a few verses, and I was not able to shun all obscurity, as I personally would have

preferred. But if the reader finds anything lacking in the verse summary, let him check the prose argument carefully, and from collating both I am sure he will glean the true meaning without any difficulty; for I have tried to make sure that what I had to skip in the one in the interest of brevity, the other makes good. But here, too, I will take pains to see in the future that this handbook, awaited till now with great yearning by many men both good and learned, and now published for all those devoted to learning and texts of antiquity, will eventually come out expanded and emended so that no one can justly find cause to object to our work. In the meantime I earnestly beg the kind reader to take these efforts--such as they are--in good part. Farewell [Vale].

Ovid narrates in thrice five books bodies
     changed into new forms;
friend John, you so elucidate these
     in laborious verse
that you save many people much labor
     who relish such things.
Thus your labor will meet with much thanks from
     the tribe of the learned,
and henceforth the name Spreng will be current
     in all of the schools,
and your verse will be linked with the Quatrains [Tetrasticha]
     I played at myself,
and whom love and the nine Muses joined
     will Posterity also.