To Gustavus Selenus,

his most Clement Lord,

who constructed the Work on Steganography.

Let others celebrate and boast the labors of Hercules,
        be it sweet to me to enjoy the labor of Gustavus. 

Let venerable Antiquity boast the fashioners of song,
        among whom Orpheus was, I think, the first, who, they
say, drew his song the beasts and, wonderful!  with his
          Thracian lyre, stopped the rivers in their course;
who, they sing, moved, with his tuneful strings, the Plutonian realm,

          and the grim Humenides, and Cerberus the dog. 

Away with poets!  fooleries, and in their stead the real place. 

          SELENUS produces a work more useful than those,

in teaching faithfully with wondrous art such arts

          as surpass in usefulness the goddesses of melic song. 

Whence ‘tis fitting even that the poets themselves should celebrate

          the praises of this man and place SILENUS after him. 

But let no ordinary soul, -- this I advise, -- dare this to do,

          but the one whose locks are wreathed with laurel garlands. 

SILENUS himself should glorify Selenus.  The latter is a god;

          a place among the great to have wished is enough for me.

Written, as a Mark of dutiful, obedient and humble Devotion,

by Andreas Ludwig Schopper, Adviser to the Lord the Author.