Euripides, Tragoediae, Basel, 1524, near-contemporary German pigskin binding

Euripides

Τραγοιδιαι δυο Εκαβη και Ιφιγενεια εν Αυλιδι. Tragoediae duae, Hecuba & Iphigenia in Aulide [translataed by Erasmus]. Basel: (Froben), 1524

8vo (179 x 122mm.), parallel text in Greek and Latin, woodcut printer's device on title-page and final verso, woodcut initials, near-contemporary blind-stamped pigskin with a roll-tooled border with medallion portraits of Caesar, Cicero, Vergil and Ovid interspersed with German princely armorials (plausibly by the Kasseler Hofbuchbinder, EBDB w00041), line numbers added in red crayon for Iphigenia in Aulis, manuscript annotations in a German hand (plausibly made by the eighteenth-century owner)

Erasmus's dedications are to William Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, his patron and friend whom he first met in London in 1505. His translations of these two plays, made while he was in Louvain in 1502-1504, were first printed in 1506 and regularly reprinted throughout the sixteenth century.

LITERATURE

VD16 E 4243

PROVENANCE

Henrici Boesch[-?] 1782, signature on flyleaf