Published in the same year as the original edition in Spanish, the translation possibly by Philip von Zesen. 'The most remarkable treatise of political devices for the use of a prince was written by a pious layman Saavedra Fajardo ... The hundred devices and discourses with maxims of statecraft begin with Hercules strangling the serpents in the cradle, and end with an emblem worthy of the macabre imagination of Valdes Leal: a skull covered by a spider's web' (Praz).