The Roman History (Res Gestae)

...use his own freedom. For whatever care, and that certainly, which cannot be denied, most outstanding, polished him there, it is right to think that he did not cease to gasp and almost plaintively demand that he be permitted to give thanks to the place of his first restoration after a great and long vexation, not only to the arbiter of his restitution but also to its author. Nor do I doubt now that he burns and flames with such eagerness that, approaching that famous archive of good learning dedicated to St. Mark referring to the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice under the leadership of Lindenbrogius Friedrich Lindenbrog, a German scholar, he greets it with the same mind with which a shipwrecked man greets his savior, since after so many years he sees it presided over by Him who, just as he thinks it is of his faith to take care that by his providence and kindness he continues to afford him the just sanctity and the custody of the ancient exemplar, so he is not about to avert his ritual from his hereditary clientele and from the genius of so many others of the ancients.

If I may be permitted to confess the truth, this is the very thing, my Lord, which I have most sharply desired; this is what I seek to understand out of love for Ammianus: and if I am admitted under this shadow, so that I may enjoy the desire of my deepest mind to reveal to Your Most Serene Highness a will long unduly hidden, I shall have touched the height of my happiness. For I bear a breast not with a feigned or foolish frenzy, not with the madness of some Delphic heat, but inflamed and swollen by Your—Best and divinely constituted Prince for well-deserving of the best part of the human race—so present and effective divinity in me, and by Your most indulgent munificence. This force, which presses upon me most gratefully, and which compels me to throw forth and express not my hair a reference to the practice of tearing hair in mourning or religious frenzy, but my sacredly conceived vows, if I cannot shake off, I hope at least to soothe by this open profession, so that in this religious concert of so many piously favoring tongues, which is sent continuously from all sides by all the Muses to Your vaults, Most Benign Prince, I may bring forth a whistle...