The desire to obtain the missing parts of Livy’s history was universal; and in the days of Louis XIV. especially, people allowed themselves to be taken in by the most extravagant stories. At one moment, they were said to be in existence at Constantinople;[26] at another, at Chios; and then, in an Arabic[27] translation, at Fez. Only a short time ago, one heard of a translation, which was said to have been found at Saragossa. At Lausanne there formerly existed a complete manuscript of the fifth decade; but it has been lost. A real treasure was found by Bruns of Holstein, who lived at Rome in 1772 and 1773. He discovered a little volume in which some books of the Old Testament, in the Vulgate version but with very differing readings, were contained; and which almost entirely consisted of re-written leaves, originally from the Heidelberg Library to judge from the handwriting, perhaps a Bobbian manuscript. In this he found _M. Tullî Ciceronis Oratio pro Roscio incipit feliciter_; and seeing that it began differently from the speeches as they usually were, he considered it to be the lost commencement of the oration _pro Roscio Comœdo_. He called in the learned and ingenious Italian Giovenazzi, and asked him to examine it; the latter decided that it was the _Oratio pro Roscio Amerino_, yet did not observe the excellent various readings, nor discover in what preceded the lost oration _pro Rabirio perduellionis_. They turned over some more leaves, and found some very elegant hand writing with the superscription _T. Livî liber nonagesimus primus_. The aid of chemical means being as yet unknown in those days, they read it with incredible exertions. It was reserved for me, to do what they could not accomplish. I have read it all through, and completed it.