Hesychius, Dictionarium, Venice, Aldus, 1514, modern leather, Egnazio-San Giorgio Maggiore copy

Hesychius

Λεξικον. Dictionarium. (Venice: in the house of Aldus and Andrea Torresano, August 1514)

folio (298 x 200mm.), text in Greek, woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso (otherwise blank), modern tan leather by A. & A. Ganiarne of Athens, old inventory number 129 on front flyleaf (retained from earlier binding), paper repairs to title-page, a few leaves browned, occasional light foxing, a few wormholes, small adhesive label to spine

EDITIO PRINCEPS, edited by Marcus Musurus from an early fifteenth-century manuscript owned by the Mantuan mathematician Gian Giacomo Bardellone, the dedicatee of this edition. The lexicon of Hesychius is considered of particular importance; like many other lexicographers, he records passages from numerous works which are now lost, and he based his work on earlier dictionaries which have also not survived. In particular he recorded unusual vocabulary and dialects which are not known from any other source.

BEQUEATHED TO SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE IN VENICE BY GIOVANNI BATTISTA EGNAZIO (1478-1553), a pupil of Marcus Musurus, who had worked for Aldus as an editor and was part of the Aldine Academy. He taught Aldus's sons and continued his work for the press long after Aldus's death in 1515. His will specified that his Greek and Latin Aldine printings should go to the library of San Giorgio Maggiore, though much of his library was sold and came into the possession of Ulrich Fugger. 

LITERATURE

Aldo Manuzio tipografo 124; Edit16 23059; Renouard 1514/3; UCLA 122; Botley, Learning Greek in Western Europe 1396-1529, Appendix 2:15

PROVENANCE

"Iste liber legatus est bibliothecae mon^rii S^ti Giorgii maioris Venetiarum a can[onic]o Jo. Baptista Egnatio. 1553", i.e. Giovanni Battista Egnazio, bequeathed to; Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice; note in English on flyleaf about this copy, dated 3.13.6