Isocrates (436-338 BC).

Chancery folio (294 x 198mm.), 199 leaves (of 200, without initial blank), 35 lines, Greek type, 4- to 7-line initial spaces with printed guides, woodcut printer's device on final verso, ruled in red (late eighteenth-century), early nineteenth-century calf gilt, spine gilt in compartments, gilt edges, rebacked retaining original spine

G.P. LeG. Starkie, sale in these rooms, 30 October 1962, lot 333, £270, Charles W. Traylen, Guildford, Surrey, for Lord Wardington

H 9312; BMC vi 767; Bodleian XVc. I-042; Goff I210

editio princeps. Isocrates is one of the greatest exponents of rhetoric as an art. His speeches were written as literary works, although many have political causes, and in his work Attic prose reaches a very high point. Himself the scion of a wealthy family, who was much influenced by Socrates, he had to leave Athens during the tyranny of the Thirty, when he moved to Chios. In the Renaissance his educational works were much admired and read, in particular his Ad Demonicum (which begins this volume) and Ad Nicoclem, on the duties of princes, and often printed separately, as well as being translated into a wide variety of modern languages. The editor Demetrius Chalcondylas returned from Florence to Milan in 1492 and this seems to have have given a fillip to Greek printing there. A new Greek type was cast from the punches used by Bonus Accursius in the 1480s, and the cost was borne by three Milanese, Bartolomeo S (Skuasos), Vicenzo Aliprandi and Bartolomeo R (Rhozon). Sebastiano de Pontremoli is otherwise unknown, but may have been the compositor. This is one of two books printed with this type.

The firm of Pachel & Scinzenzeler and Scinzenzeler alone was hugely productive; indeed they produced more than 380 editions, more than half the total Milanese output for the years 1478 to 1500. In this work Ulrich's name appeares as 'Errikos' (Henricus). It is highly likely that Henricus Scinzenzeler and Ulrichus Scinzenzeler are one and the same. The firm was carried on until 1546 by Giovanni Angelo Scinzenzeler (see G. Balsamo, Giovann' Angelo Scinzenzeler: tipografo in Milano 1500-1526, annali e biobibliografia, Florence, 1959). In the present copy the setting of quire A is of the first setting (breadth of type page 113-114mm., differences in number of lines to the page). The second setting has a different breadth of type page (119-120mm.), and must have been done to regularise the breadth. It should be mentioned that it is this second setting of A which is found in the reissue of Venice, 1535 (copies in BL and Paris).