1) In 1415 the Florentine scholar Poggio Bracciolini discovered a lost manuscript of Cicero in the library of Cluny Abbey, France. The manuscript copied on vellum in the 700s, gave us for the first time Cicero's complete speeches against Catiline and the magistrate Verres.. 
2) Two years later in the summer of 1417 at Langres, France, Poggio discovered ten more previously unknown orations of Cicero including the oration for Aulus Caecina (Pro Caecina).
3) Carolingian scribes had made many copies of Vitruvius' monumental "On Architecture" but Poggio rediscovered the lost masterpiece in 1414 in the Abbey Library of Saint Gall, Switzerland. In 1425 at Montecassino, he discovered the first manuscript of Vitruvius' "On Aqueducts".
4) But perhaps Poggio's greatest find came at the Abbey of Fulda, Germany where he discovered the only surviving manuscript of Lucretius' scientific opus 'On the Nature of Things' (De rerum natura), ensuring it was quickly copied and helping supercharge Renaissance thought.
5) In a delightful aside, Poggio said that as he scoured manuscripts the name Lucretius jumped out to him because he recalled Cicero mentioning the name in his speeches. Read about the classical manuscript discoveries of Poggio Bracciolini in "The Swerve" by Stephen Greenblatt .
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