Plutarch, Pompei viri illustris Vita, the life of Pompey, in the Latin translation of Antonio Tudertino, manuscript on paper

Estimate

2,000 - 3,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

71 leaves, 200mm. by 143mm., complete, collation: i-vi^{10, vii^{10+1, with vertical catchwords, 21 lines, written-space 140mm. by 85mm., written in dark brown ink in an elegant sloping humanistic cursive minuscule, headings in margins in pale red, blank space left for initial on fol.1r, contemporary marginal notes, occasional minor stains and darkening of the paper, generally in excellent condition, early nineteenth-century English russia blind-stamped and gilt, brown paper endleaves, gilt edges, binding scuffed}}

Provenance

provenance

John Broadley, F.S.A. (1774-c.1833), his arms on the binding; doubtless in his sale, Evans, 12 July 1832 or 19 June 1833. There is a cutting from a French catalogue, c.1900, in which this was no.122.

Catalogue Note

text

This is the life of Pompey the Great (106-48 B.C.), Julius Caesar’s military rival, written by Plutarch (c.45-125 A.D.), priest of the temple of Apollo at Delphi. A translation into Latin of Plutarch’s lives was commissioned in the 1450s and 60s by the Florentine bookseller, Vespasiano da Bisticci, and was famously printed in Venice by Jenson in 1478. The translations were the work of many Florentine humanists. The present rendition of the life of Pompey is commonly ascribed to Jacobus Angelus de Scaperia (cf. Weiss, Mélanges Bruno Nardi, 1955, p.824) but is attributed here and in some other manuscripts, with equal credibility, to Antonio Tudertino. The life of Pompey was printed in the Vite Plutarchi Chereoni, Paris, 1514, fols.230-43. Much later it was translated into English by Dryden. Sixteen manuscripts of the text are listed by L. Bertalot, Initia Humanistica Latina, II, i, 1990, p.323, no.5940, two of them in Oxford and all others in continental public libraries. It opens on fol.1r, “Pompei viri Illustris Vita ex Plutarcho per Antonium Tudertinum versa, [E]rga pompeium mox …”, and ends on fol.71r, “… posite sunt, Finis”.