
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~166r~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For the workshop



If something is omitted: the harvester is not reproached for
leaving some ears of wheat. If any artisans complain
that one discovers their craft secrets, and if the
goddesses of Eleusis
complain, as they did to N. the
Pythagorean, that one has divulged their mysteries, excuse
yourself based on the words of the ancient Hebrews quoted by
Josephus.



As the hen carefully searches the garbage thrown out of a
house for a crumb or a grain that she divides among her
chicks, thus one distributes to orphans that which
has been researched among the arts considered vile & abject.



Tablet of Cebes, idle, but the
workshop represents all things
active. 



If the jealous disapprove that these things are picked up & taken
from others, reply that since Nullum est jam dictum quod non dictum
aut factum sit prius & that one
knows that all arts were invented in the space of a thousand
years, so that you do not think that you are able to invent
anything new but rather rediscover anew the books of Numa,
buried par & long unknown & forgotten, in order to
publish them for those who do not know them; so that as the
preceding day is teacher for the subsequent day,
thus you needed to learn from those who proceeded you in order to teach
to those who come after. The Latins took from the
Greeks, as Cicero from Plato &
Virgil from Homer. Aulus
Gellius, Valerius Maximus only
made a collection from various authors who had already
written. Livy made his xxiii book from the 2nd or 3rd of
Polybius. Serapis was deemed the inventor
of agriculture among the Egyptians , & however so was
Ceres among the Sicilians. Pythagoras &
others from Tyana learned by their travels the disciplines
which they claimed to have invented in their country, &c. Will one
not say the weaver has made a cloth or precious stuff, even
though he did not dye & twist, wind & prepare the bobbins and
balls of thread? Will one say the mason has not made a
house, but only piled up ready-made stones?
“Apollo a Chironemedicari didicit
& tamen deus medicinae habitus”.
“HomerusOrphei poema imitatus est, nam cum
Orpheus sic prius exorsus esset: Iram cane,
deam dea, Cereris frugiferentis, ita reddit
Homerus: Iram cane, dea, PelidaeAchillis.”
In Justino martire, circa
princip{ium}.

