Theophrasti De Historia Plantarum (1483 Incunabulum)

...for those who cannot read Latin. A very useful endeavor, and worthy of a supreme pontiff. For this, just as it can make men learned and purged of all barbarism, so it must also make them more humane and more just. This makes your libraries, supreme prince, fuller, not with some few books of the Jews, as is written about Ptolemy Philadelphus, but with very many and most ample codices of the Greeks, a most noble race and preeminent in every kind of literature. Wherefore, with the best of reasons, those libraries, which bring so much light to the Latin language and provide so much utility to men, ought to be considered treasures far better than those which we have heard that certain pontiffs always guarded, and, like that dragon of Colchis, constantly watched over them without any utility. Since these things are so, all the citizens and even all the inhabitants of Europe call you, with the best right, the founder and author of a certain golden age, and they extol you with highest praises and follow you with honors just as if you were another god on earth. But although I desire to explain these things more fully, most clement prince, the work of Theophrastus, which you had decreed that I should translate, now draws me to itself, so that it may be inspected by you more quickly. Wherefore, I shall try, as far as I am able, to report on these things more widely elsewhere. Now, receive the books of Theophrastus on plants with a cheerful face, according to your usual humanity, which you ordered me to translate. Not because you thought that I could do it well enough—for you are not unaware that I am of little value in that matter—but so that you might at some time hear a Greek man speaking Latin. For the novelty of the thing can also bring some delight in this kind of endeavor. However, the matter seemed to my mind so much to exceed my own strength that, had I not firmly resolved to abide by your law and will, I would have easily refused it, for I could not well accomplish it. Furthermore, your commands have such weight with me that you should not wish it to be considered what little I can plant in a foreign sky with supreme labor, so long as I seem to have complied with your will. Inspect, therefore, and read, as far as your occupations permit, the books which, by your command, we have translated into the Latin language and published in your name; and if I seem to have said anything correctly, attribute it to your divine help. For we began the work invoking you, most pious one, not otherwise than a god.

THE PREFACE OF THEODORE THE GREEK OF THESSALONICA TO THE BOOKS OF THEOPHRASTUS ON PLANTS, WHICH HE RENDERED INTO LATIN FROM THE GREEK LANGUAGE.

I believe that famous saying of Heraclitus should be remembered, who asserted that the entrance to a certain lowly little house was not to be disdained, briefly and beautifully; for he is said to have entered some hut and sat by the furnace for perhaps longer than necessary for the sake of the winter fire. When he was asked by some who were ashamed to enter such a lowly place, he said with a smile: "Enter, for there are gods here also." For even if that study should be thought noble and grave, in which you show yourself not as an interpreter of another’s volume, but as an author of your own...