Historical quotation search: Equations/formulae in (Latin?) prose, before modern symbolic notation I have been trying, without success, to find a vaguely-remembered quotation: the quadratic equation (or perhaps the quadratic formula), given in (Latin?) prose, along lines like “Consider that quantity, which, when multiplied by itself and under multiplication by the first constant, …”
The purpose is just to contrast with the clarity and compactness of modern algebraic notation — so it doesn’t need to be the quadratic equation or formula, and it doesn’t need to be in Latin; any similar historical quotation to illustrate the point would do.
(Two relevant meta threads: Are history of maths questions acceptable?, and Area 51 proposal: history of science and maths.  Also, this question as a sample question on that area 51 proposal.)
 A: A better known figure than the 16th century Stifel is the 17th century Pierre de Fermat who still used notation that was not fully symbolic.  Thus, in his work anticipating the calculus, he used the terms aequalitat and adaequalitat rather than the familiar equality symbol. An example may be found in section 8.8 of this text.
A: This was quite normal before the invention of the modern notation. You can pretty much take any text from the 16th century. Let me give you a somewhat well known example from Stifel's "Arithmetica integra", 1544, p. 240:

Primo. A numero radicum incipe, eumque dimidiatum, loco eius pone
  dimidium illius, quod in loco suo stet, donec consumata sit tota
  operatio. 

which loosely translates to (my translation)

First. Start with the root number, half it, and put the half in the
  place, where it should remain, until the whole operation is performed.

so in formulas that would be $$\frac{x}{2}$$ which is a lot shorter. He goes on to explain how to solve quadratic equations in general and even gives a nice Mnemonic to remember how it works: AMASIAS. Here is a picture of the whole passage:
I think even Descartes used quite long sentences to explain formulas.
