Euclid's Elements of Geometry, Plane and Solid

...seven books† of which the first two have perished*, [and] the remaining five§ abound with so many and such varied, most noble inventions of almost every kind of mathematics that they are considered by all to be among the first monuments of the ancients that are extant.

You have a brief history of the origin and progression of Mathematics. From which the antiquity, excellence, and dignity of Mathematics appears. Certainly, the Princes of the Republic of Letters are the same who gave birth to Philosophy and also to Mathematics, twin sisters as it were of a single birth, which he who would violently tear apart from one another is truly cruel, with signal injury to their innate harmony; since, as is wont to happen with twins, if one is taken away either by place or death, the other must necessarily languish, and indeed waste away.

† At least eight.
Or they lie hidden in libraries.
§ Six.