Lot 58
  • 58

Symmachus, Quintus Aurelius.

Estimate
1,000 - 1,500 GBP
bidding is closed

Description

  • Epistolae familiares & elegantissimae nunquam alias impressae: & noviter per Bartholomaeum Cynischum Amerinum ab inferis pene revocatae. [Venice: Bernardino Vitali, c. 1505?]
4to (204 x 147mm.), a-z aa-dd4, woodcut initials, eighteenth-century vellum gilt, red morocco lettering-piece, lacking final two quires with colophon, occasional slight browning

Literature

H15204; Censimento 16 CNCE 36124, also lacking final two quires (giving imprint as [Aldus Manutius, c. 1501]). The complete edition is listed as Censimento 16 CNCE 37808 with the date [not after 1539].

Catalogue Note

This rare edition of Symmachus is recorded in only four copies by Censimento 16, and we have traced only two further copies in German libraries (Berlin and Munich). The typeface matches that of other publications by Vitali from the first decade of the sixteenth century, and as the first dated edition of Symmachus was printed in Strassburg in 1510, this is the editio princeps of his letters.

The title-page lists other many tracts included in this work not present in this copy, which contains only the letters of Symmachus, but presumably these are all short works included in the final two quires.