On the Ceremonies of the Byzantine Court

I will never cease to consider myself your countryman, and finally, because you have deemed me worthy of the honor of being a member of your college. But first, at the threshold of this work, which will be adorned by the unpublished portion of the Reiskian referring to Reiske commentaries, I must proclaim the memory of Suhm. He wisely understood how precious were the papers of that great man whom most learned men of that age despised with arrogance and ignorance. He generously purchased them from the widow, secured them for his own library, and saved them for the benefit of literature. I say he saved them; for in the great storm and upheaval of affairs that followed, had that man not been unlike the others, the labors of Reiske would have either perished entirely or perhaps, bought up at a cheap price if possible, been shoved into the libraries of some Lucullus a metaphor for wealthy collectors who hoard books by some Dibdin a 19th-century bibliographer, from which it is said that nothing returns once it has been placed in those tombs. Woe to you, evil shadows of Orcus the underworld! But now, on the contrary, it happened that after some years, along with the rest of the Suhmian collection, they migrated into the Royal Library of Copenhagen Hauniensis. This library is most worthy to be adorned with such treasures, for in the splendor of its codices, especially those that pertain to the Greek literature of the orient-