travelling beyond the term of fifty-eight years, and am in Florence, the
city of my birth. Many untoward things can I remember, such as happen to
all who live upon our earth; and from those adversities I am now more
free than at any previous period of my career-nay, it seems to me that I
enjoy greater content of soul and health of body than ever I did in
bygone years. I can also bring to mind some pleasant goods and some
inestimable evils, which, when I turn my thoughts backward, strike
terror in me, and astonishment that I should have reached this age of
fifty-eight, wherein, thanks be to God, I am still travelling
prosperously forward.



II

IT is true that men who have laboured with some show of excellence, have
already given knowledge of themselves to the world; and this alone ought
to suffice them; I mean the fact that they have proved their manhood and
achieved renown. Yet one must needs live like others; and so in a work
like this there will always be found occasion for natural bragging,
which is of divers kinds, and the first is that a man should let others
know he draws his lineage from persons of worth and most ancient origin.

I am called Benvenuto Cellini, son of Maestro Giovanni, son of Andrea,
son of Cristofano Cellini; my mother was Madonna Elisabetta, daughter to
Stefano Granacci; both parents citizens of Florence. It is found written
in chronicles made by our ancestors of Florence, men of old time and of
credibility, even as Giovanni Villani writes, that the city of Florence
was evidently built in imitation of the fair city of Rome; and certain
remnants of the Colosseum and the Baths can yet be traced. These things