Free The Essential Galileo by Maurice A. Finocchiaro Galileo Galilei Page A

pyramids; with this desire, lastly, cities have been built, and distinguished by the names of those men, whom the gratitude of posterity thought worthy of being handed down to all ages. For the state of the human mind is such that, unless it be continually stirred by the likenesses of things obtruding themselves upon it from without, all recollection of them easily passes away from it.
    Others, however, having regard for more stable and more lasting monuments, secured the eternity of the fame of great men by placing it under the protection, not of marble or bronze, but of the Muses’ guardianship and the imperishable monuments of literature. But why do I mention these things? As if human wit, content with these regions, did not dare to advance further; whereas, since it well understood that all human monuments do perish at last by violence, by weather, or by age, it took a wider view and invented more imperishable signs, over which destroying Time and envious Age could claim no rights; so, betaking itself to the sky, it inscribed on the wellknown orbs of the brightest stars—those everlasting orbs—the names of those who, for eminent and god-like deeds, were accounted worthy to enjoy an eternity in company with the stars. Wherefore the fame of Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Hercules, and the rest of the heroes by whose names the stars are called, will not fade until the extinction of the splendor of the constellations themselves.
    But this invention of human shrewdness, so particularly noble and admirable, [56] has gone out of date ages ago, inasmuch as primeval heroes are in possession of those bright abodes and keep them by a sort of right. Into such company the affection of Augustus in vain attempted to introduce Julius Caesar; for when he wished that the name Julian should be given to a star that appeared in his time (one of those which the Greeks and the Latins alike name, from their hairlike tails, comets), it vanished in a short time and mocked his tooeager hope. But we are able to prophesize far truer and happier things for your highness, Most Serene Prince, for scarcely have the immortal graces of your mind begun to shine on earth, when bright stars present themselves in the heavens, like tongues to tell and celebrate your most eminent virtues to all time. Behold then, reserved for your famous name four stars, belonging not to the ordinary and less-distinguished multitude of the fixed stars, but to the illustrious order of the planets; like genuine children of Jupiter, they accomplish their orbital revolutions around this most noble star with mutually unequal motions and with marvelous speed, and at the same time all together in common accord they also complete every twelve years great revolutions around the center of the world, certainly around the sun itself.
    But the Maker of the Stars himself seemed to direct me by clear reasons to assign these new planets to the famous name of Your Highness in preference to all others. For just as these stars, like children worthy of their sire, never leave the side of Jupiter by any appreciable distance, so who does not know that clemency, kindness of heart, gentleness of manners, splendor of royal blood, nobility in public functions, wide extent of influence and power over others (all of which have fixed their common abode and seat in Your Highness),— who, I say, does not know that all these qualities, according to the providence of God, from whom all good things do come, emanate from the benign star of Jupiter? Jupiter, I maintain, at the instant of the birth of Your Highness having at length emerged from the turbid mists of the horizon, and occupying the middle quarter of the heavens, and illuminating the eastern angle from his own royal house, from that exalted throne Jupiter looked out upon your most happy birth and poured forth into a most pure air all the brightness of his majesty, in order that your tender body and your mind (already adorned by God with still