“It was a wise and useful provision of the ancients to transmit their thoughts to posterity by recording them in treatises, so that they should not be lost, but, being developed in succeeding generations through publications in books, should gradually attain in later times, to the highest refinement of learning.”

—  Vitruvius , book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 1
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VII

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Vitruvius 203
Roman writer, architect and engineer -80–-15 BC

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