The Roman History (Res Gestae)

...men of learning. Stimulated myself by the consideration of these things, and thinking that I did not spring from mute blood, I had burned throughout my youth to withdraw into that inner sanctum of Your empire as if to sacred things, and since the ability was not lacking when the years urged it, I conceded myself to it as if God were pointing the way. What was that hospitality of the Etruscan Muses? What was that life of mine? How much more learned was the agitation of the studies of that time than any opinion! When, to speak truly, I finally learned to study, that is, to notice what the difference was for him who follows places that are more fortunate and better furnished with these recondite books, compared to him who, living at home, can satisfy himself only with the contemplation of those things which he receives from printers, having no concern for anything beyond their age. That is the calamity which indeed causes excessive ruins in these lands. Hence we are prohibited from admiring anything justly, hence from recognizing the true and the upright, and the fortunes and fates of the business we are treating. But there, hour by hour, it was permitted to contemplate how vainly and incoherently things had been treated by me from the western side of the Alps, and by all others as well—even when ancient writings, produced for posterity by the greatest minds and spread through hands by the support of such great expenses, were being treated most highly. With what care I name those days, those most festive days, in which I began to understand Herodotus and at the same time recognized that I was understood by no one! O those venerable moments which opened to me Polybius, Arrian, Aelian, and Dio Cassius, whom I had known as closed to all others! How auspicious were those hours in which I could give effort to Aeneas, Hierocles, and Artemidorus, so that I might hear them speaking or narrating with a clear voice openly! Then I was sweet and clear to myself. Then I could imagine...