The Roman History (Res Gestae)

...and a murmur, minimal indeed, but pronounced with the most chaste meditation.

I discovered that the secret force of fate had been so arranged that Your Tuscany has contributed most throughout all ages to Roman and Greek antiquity—that is, to the greatest part of those things with which the refinement of noble minds is connected and bound. I saw that the Greeks in particular, men always inspired by an immense desire to know humanity, when they poured themselves through the rest of Italy, progressed toward this Tuscany of Yours, founded colonies there, and did not so much bring their own institutions there, but rather, as a certain auspicious Genius of the land enticed them, committed themselves to it and sought the full culture of their elegance from that region with marvelous joy. And although these things are so ancient that the entire order of whatever centuries they may be still circulates their experience; yet I noted that in our times it was so constituted that the instruments of this pleasant labor, namely books and whatever is left to us for the custody of ancient memory, whether through the Greeks and the interpretation of the Greek language, or through the Italians themselves and the Latin language, has been saved from destruction by the sole caution and fostering of Your Tuscany. For, God willing, I had achieved the goal of refusing to include my own progress within the limits of one sufficiently narrow enclosure, as is the habit of some, but rather, by wandering freely, I wished that those things would not be unknown to me which, through so many hundreds of years—despite such loss of all cleanliness, so many devastations by barbarians, so many miserable empires of tyrants who, as we read, granted all their power against good books—have been preserved not without celestial care and are exalted with such great praise by the men of our own and the preceding age.