16 mo. 2 volumes. 12.1 x 7.8 cm. I : 528 p. (Collation: a-z8, A-K8), II : 361 p., [1] f. (Collation: aa-yy8, zz6)
Robert Estienne’s second Greek New Testament, printed in the celebrated “grecs du roi” Greek types of Claude Garamond. With the iconic device of the French king’s printer on the title pages and the Estienne device at the end of the second volume.
The extant works of Sallust, the "Bellum Iugurthinum", "Bellum Catilinarium" (and associated texts), and the fragments of his "Histories," dealing with the years 78-67 B.
Octavo: 17 x 11 cm. (32), 523, (1, blank), (108) pp. Collation: I. *8, **8 (**4 and 5 are conjugates that form the folded map of Spain), a-z8, A-Q8, R4. II. 134, (16) pp. Collation: A-I8, K4
This edition of Caesar includes the texts of the “Gallic Wars” and “Civil War”, together with the "De bello Alexandrino", "De bello Africano", and "De bello Hispaniense", ascribed to Aulus Hirtius. This edition also includes Raimundo Marliano’s useful index of the topography of Gaul in Roman times.
Admired for their style (most famously by Cicero) and read by both his supporters and detractors alike in antiquity, Caesar’s Commentarii fell into obscurity in the Middle Ages.
Venice: Guilielmo de Fontaneto. Montisferrati, 1520
$5,800.00
Folio: 30.5 x 21 cm. Collation: aa4, a-c8, d10, e-k8, l6, m10, n-x8, y10 (final blank lacking.)
With the commentaries of Bernardinus Cyllenius on Tibullus; Antonius Parthenius and Palladius Fuscus on Catullus, Philippus Beroaldus on Propertius; and the Emendationesof Hieronymus Avantius on Lucretius, Catullus, the Priapeia, and Statius' Silvae.
Folio: Five volumes bound as two: 37.5 x 25 cm. Vol I: “Rhetorica”: *8, a-s8. (*1 is the general title, a1 is the title to Vol I); “Orationes”: aa-zz8, aaa-qqq8, rrr-sss6 (lacking blank sss6); Vol II: “Epistolae”: A-Z8, AA-CC8; “Philosophica”: Aa-Zz8, AAA-DDD8, EEE10; “Explicationes”: A-P8, Q10 (Q10 blank and present)
For his edition, Robert Estienne used the text of Cicero as edited by Pietro Vettori, and has included Vettori's important "Explicationes" as a fifth volume. Vettori would later (in 1557) furnish the first complete text of Aeschylus' "Oresteia" for Henri Estienne II's celebrated edition of the tragedian's plays.
"The respect and renown accumulated by the edition of Cicero's complete works produced by Petrus Victorius (Pietero Vettori, 1499-1585) between 1534 and 1537, was in large part due to the careful and extensive integration of manuscript evidence into the text.
Cambridge: Ex officinâ Johan. Hayes, celeberrimæ Academiæ typographi. Impensis Richardi Green bibliopolæ Cantab., 1694
$1,800.00
Folio: 32 x 20.5 cm. [8], lvi, 330; [2], 529, [43 ] p. Collation: a-g4, h2, (A)2, B-Z4, Aa-Tt4, Vv2, a-z4, aa-zz4, aaa-zzz4, aaaa-bbbb4, cccc2. With two added engraved portraits of Barnes and Euripides.
“The merits of all preceding editions are eclipsed by this celebrated one of Joshua Barnes. Fabricius observes that ‘the text is accurately revised and printed, the metrical rules of Canter diligently corrected, and the entire ancient scholia on the first seven plays subjoined and enriched by excerpta from a manuscript in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The notes of various learned men, and those of Barnes accompany the scholia; the fragments of Euripides are carefully collected and displayed, with Greek and Latin notes as far as verse 2068; lastly, there are some epistles, attributed to Euripides.
Folio: 32.7 x 21.7 cm. [12], 804, 809-1351, 1354-1403, [43] pp. Collation: [A] B-6F . (with blank [A]6 and without blank 6F6)
This is the first complete rendering into English of the most important Roman historian. The scholar-surgeon Philemon Holland is one of the great literary figures of the twilight years of the Elizabethan age. Like his contemporary John Florio, who translated Montaigne’s “Essays” into English in 1599, Holland not only made the works that he translated accessible to English readers, but also put his own stamp on those works, creating something at once faithful and new.
Strasbourg: Ex aedibus Schurerianis (Matthias Schürer), 1519
$4,800.00
Quarto: 20 x 14.8 cm. [196] pp. Collation: A-M4/8, N8, O4, P6 (-blank P6)
A school edition of Ovid’s “Fasti”, with the first half of Book I closely annotated by an early reader, who has also written a full-page “argumentum” of the work on the verso of the title page.
“[In the ‘Fasti’] Ovid’s project is to illustrate the ancient myths and customs of Latium, following the course of the Roman calendar. Thus twelve books in elegiac meter were projected, one for each month of the year, but the poet’s unexpected exile interrupted the work in the middle, at the sixth month, June; the work was partially revised during the years of exile.
Folio: Binding dimensions: 34.5 x 22 cm. Paper: 32 x 21.5 cm. [216] leaves (18 gatherings of 12 leaves, with quire numbers at the foot of the final leaf in each gathering. Complete. The last leaf in the final quire is a blank. With a blank fly-leaf at front and rear. Paper with a watermark of three mountains with a cross (very close to Briquet Nos. 11797 and 11799), documented in Germany in the period 1450-82. Text in 28 lines. 23 x 11 cm.
BINDING: Bound in 16th century quarter deerskin and thick wooden boards, with embossed brass strips where the deerskin meets the boards and two ornate brass clasps embossed with a stylized flower and a sun with a central monogram "yhs" (Iesus). For similar clasps, cf. Adler, Handbuch Buchverschluss und Buchbeschlag , p. 118f., Fig. 6-08b (Italy, 2nd half of 16th c.). The 2nd ffep has a watermark of two crossed arrows, indicating Italian origin (late 15th or 16th c.
Frankfurt: Joh. Feyerabend for S. Feyerabend, H. Takke and P. Fischer, 1587
$6,500.00
Octavo: 15.8 x 9.6 cm. [16], 573, [18] pp. Collation: *8, a-z8, A-Z8, aa-oo8
This edition is illustrated with 178 woodcut illustrations by the great Nuremberg artist Virgil Solis (1514-1562), a member of the German mannerist school, who partly followed in the tradition of Dürer.
Octavo: 19.3 x 11.5 cm. I. *8 (-*1, blank), **8, ***2, A-Z8, Aa-Oo8, Pp4, Aaa-Lll8; II. *4, A-F8, G4 (lacking blank leaf G4) With an added, engraved title page by Romeyn de Hooghe (1645-1708).
Michael Hadrianides’ 1669 edition of Petronius is the first to incorporate the “Fragmentum” discovered in Trau, Dalmatia, which contained the hitherto unknown text of the “Cena Trimalchionis” and is also "the first edition to contain all the fragments of the novel that we currently possess”. This copy is bound together with the –often lacking- 1670 edition of the “Fragmentum”, which prints the text as it appeared in the manuscript, here edited by Johannes Lucius, with the Apologia of Marino Statileo, who discovered the manuscript in Dalmatia.
Schmeling & Stuckley, Bibilography of Petronius, 71 & 78; Gaselee (Bibliography of Petronius), 49 & 51; Schweiger II p.723; Brunet IV 574; Graesse Vol 5 p. 239; Dibdin (4th ed.) Vol II, p. 276. Literature: See M.S. Smith’s 1975 Oxford edition of the “Cena Trimalchionis”, pp. xxii-xxiii and xxxvi; See also Alfred R. Allinson’s introduction to his translation of the “Satyricon.”
Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresani, January 1513
$16,000.00
Octavo: 15.8 x 10 cm. Collation: *8, 1-24 in 8s. 188 leaves, including final blank. Types: 1:80 italic, 90 Greek.
The editio princeps of Pindar’s odes. With the second editions of Callimachus’ hymns and Dionysius Periegetes’ “De Situ Orbis”, and the first edition of Lycophron’s “Alexandra”. This "particularly elegant edition" combines Aldus’s portable octavo format with his attractive large Greek typeface.” (Fletcher)
The text is dedicated to Aldus' friend Andrea Navagero.
Folio: 33 x 22 cm. π6 [par.]4 a-b6 A8 B-3I6 3K4; A-3G6 3H4 3I-3O6 3P8 (lacking blank leaves π1 and 3P8) Complete in two parts; with a divisional title page to the second tome and the errata/colophon on leaf 3P7
“The ‘Natural History’ of Pliny the Elder is more than a natural history: it is an encyclopaedia of all the knowledge of the ancient world… It comprises 37 books with mathematics and physics, geography and astronomy, medicine and zoology, anthropology and physiology, philosophy and history, agriculture and mineralogy, the arts and letters… The ‘Historia’ soon became a standard book of reference; abstracts and abridgements appeared by the third century.
Quarto: 20.5 x 14.9 cm. [52] leaves. Collation: a-f8, g4
The “Mirabilia Romae” (Marvels of Rome) has achieved iconic status. It is the oldest extant guidebook to the city of Rome and the forerunner to all later guides to the Eternal City. Composed around 1143, possibly by a certain Benedict, a canon of St. Peter’s, it serves as a guide to the ruins of the ancient city, with explanations of the origins and functions of the buildings and places described (see below for a discussion of the contents.
Hain-Copinger 14880; BMC V, 478; Schudt, le guide di Roma, 565; Goff S 620; GW M42830. North American holdings of the Mirabilia editions ca. 1470-1511: Canadian Center for Architecture, Claremont Colleges, Getty, Harvard, Huntington, LC, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Morgan Library, NYPL, Walters Museum Library, Williams, Yale
Lipsius’s Seneca - With Engravings Designed by Rubens – An EXTREMELY Fine Copy
Antwerp: Ex officina Plantiniana apud viduam et filios J. Moreti, 1632
$5,500.00
Folio: 38.5 x 25 cm. *6, A-C6, A-Z6; Aa-Zz6; Aaa-Zzz6, Aaaa-Ffff6 (with blank leaf Ffff6 present). Added engraved
The third edition of Lipsius’ Seneca and the second to feature the Rubens images. Lipsius’ Seneca is the second of his two philological masterpieces. This edition was edited by Jan Van de Wouwer (1576-1635), to whom Lipsius entrusted his unpublished works.
Quarto: 25.8 x 16.7 cm. *4, a-z4, aa-zz4, aaa-kkk4, lll2; A-Z4, Aa-Gg4, Hh2 (includes blank ggg4; lacks blank Hh2).
“The great Estienne Sophocles, important for the scholia, which include those of the Byzantine scholar Demetrius Triclinius (b. ca. 1300). The Greek text is followed by the commentary of Joachim Camerarius, and his Latin versions of Ajax and Electra. Estienne has again employed his peculiar system of diacritical notations.” (Schreiber)
Quarto: 25.2 x 16.2 cm. *4, a-z4, aa-zz4, aaa-kkk4, lll2; A-Z4, Aa-Gg4, Hh2 (includes blanks ggg4 and Hh2).
“The great Estienne Sophocles, important for the scholia, which include those of the Byzantine scholar Demetrius Triclinius (b. ca. 1300). The Greek text is followed by the commentary of Joachim Camerarius, and his Latin versions of Ajax and Electra. Estienne has again employed his peculiar system of diacritical notations.” (Schreiber)
"The standards and methods of Thucydides as a contemporary historian have never been bettered. Thucydides has been valued as he hoped; statesmen as well as historians, men of affairs as well as scholars, have read and profited by him" -PMM 102
Folio: 32.2 x 21 cm. Collation: ¶6, ¶¶4, a-z6, aa-zz6, aaa-nnn6, ooo4.
"The second Estienne edition is generally considered the best sixteenth century edition of the greatest historian of Athens. For this new edition Estienne has corrected the Greek text and scholia, as well as further revised Lorenzo Valla's Latin translation, which is now printed on the same page with the Greek text, in parallel columns, while the Greek scholia are printed at the foot of the page.
