Dedication, to the City of Strasbourg

‘Argentoratum, cuius ob antiquitem Prolemeus d’ Hieronijmus, … et alii miminere, Alsatiae Metropolis, apud praterfluentem Rhenum, aliis, Argentina, aut, si quis ex re, nomen commutare velit, Aurentina, Sed vulgo Strasburgum dicta; urbs virtute, magistratuum prudentia, ac integritate, honestis Studiis, ac nobili schola inclyta.’

Very roughly translated:

‘Argentoratum, the town by the silver river, celebrated from earliest times by a lot of classical authors, the metropolis of Alsace, near the close-by-flowing Rhine; by others spoken of as Argentina the Silvery or even by a play on words Aurentina the Golden, but in the vulgar tongue Strasbourg: city renowned for courage, the watchfulness of its rulers, for integrity, for intellectual worth and a noble University.’

Legend to a sixteenth-century engraving of the city, by Abraham Hogenberg, 1572.

From the original in the Cabinet des Estampes, Strasbourg, Palais des Rohan.