Bassus, Geoponika; De re rustica, Basel, 1539, later tan morocco gilt, Syston Park copy

Cassianus Bassus

A volume from the Syston Park library, comprising:

Γεωπονικα. De re rustica selectorum libri XX [edited by Simon Grynaeus]. Basel: (Robert Winter, 1539), text in Greek, woodcut initials, woodcut printer's device on final verso, foot of title-page repaired, lacking preface (a2-8, supplied in neat contemporary manuscript)De agricultura libri viginta. Basel: Froben, 1540, woodcut printer's device on title-page and final verso, woodcut initials 

2 works in one volume, 8vo (150 x 95mm.), nineteenth-century tan morocco gilt by S. Ridge of Grantham, with his ticket, spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, joints rubbed

FIRST EDITION of the Greek text of Geoponika, bound with a Latin translation by Janus Cornarius. It was a compilation made for the Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, as one of a series of handbooks of classical learning on various subjects. The text was based on the sixth-century Eclogae of Cassianus Bassus, who is thought to have lived in Antiochia (northern Syria).

LITERATURE

VD16 C 1413 & C 1415

PROVENANCE

Sir John Hayford Thorold, Syston Park Library, sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, 12 December 1884, lot 826, 10s.; Harvard College Library, booklabels and presentation stamp dated 1908