Translation
From Philotheus Giodarno Bruno of Nola
To the friend and studious reader
It was placed there in the heights
on Chios, the countenance of Diana,
which seems dolorous with approaching steps toward the temple,
but with departures, joyful.
And the letter of Pythagoras,
with its two-horned choice between deeds,
which extends the roughshod surface of a footpath to the favored,
to him it grants the best end.
These things emerged from the profound
darknesses of shadows,
Ultimately the reader will be set before the agreeable, but now the harsher
both countenance and letter.
Dissection
- facies, facieī, f: countenance, face, image
- lit(t)era Pythagorae: the letter Y; here, a "Y" in the road, a fork
- tramēs, tramitis, m.: foot-path