Herodian

4to (9 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.; 242 x 163 mm). Text in Greek and Latin in parallel columns, printer's device on title-page, dedication by editor Henri Estienne to Philip Sidney, Robert's Sidney's older brother, red-lined, woodcut headpieces and initials, title page heightened in gold, some initials hand-colored in red, date of the imprint on title page carefully amend in gold from 1581, the year of printing, to 1586, the year of Philip's death (fatally wounded at Zutphen in September 1586). Early eighteenth-century English sprinkled calf, blind-tooled on corners, rebacked. 

Robert Sidney (signature and autograph Latin motto on title page) — H de Fleet (signature on title page) — C. Fleet, 1796 (signature on title page) — Francis Pierrepont Barnard, Aug 1880 (signature on first endpaper). acquisition: Bernard Quaritch, 1992 

Renouard 149, no 7; Schreiber 209

Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester's copy, with his signature and his Latin motto "Inveniam viam aut faciam." 

Though the signature is slightly rubbed, its offseting is still visible on the first blank. The book is dedicated by Henri Estienne to Robert's brother, the poet Philip Sidney. This copy might be a presentation copy from Estienne to Robert in memory of his brother, or, the enlightening was ordered by Robert, in memory of his brother (as the amended date suggests). 

Robert Sidney was intimately connected, through his siblings, with the Elizabethan literary renaissance and is known as a patron of literature. Numerous dedications were addressed to him. It had been discovered that he was a poet himself. In the 1960s, one of his poetic notebooks emerged through the dispersal of the Library of Warwick Castle. Sold at Sotheby's in 1975 and acquired by the British Library, the manuscript is considered by its first editor P. J. Croft as "the largest body of verse to have survived from the Elizabethan period in a text entirely set down by the poet himself."

This edition of Herodian includes Estienne's corrections, additions, and textual comments. The second part consists of the editio princeps of Zosimus' history of the Roman Empire, one of the most important sources for the period 395-410 A.D.