Strabo (c. 64 BC-19 AD).

folio (307 x 201mm.), [28], 348 [i.e. 366], [2]pp., illustration: woodcut Aldine device on title-page and on verso of final leaf, woodcut headpieces and eleven-line initials printed in red, binding: nineteenth-century red morocco by Hatton of Manchester, Macclesfield arms gilt to upper cover, gilt edges, bb3-cg6 with some staining, creasing and marginal tearing, one tear repaired, binding slightly soiled

Texas 134; Ahmanson-Murphy 149; Censimento 16 CNCE 37553 

editio princeps. Strabo was steeped in Stoic philosophy by Augustus' mentor Athenodorus before setting out on his traversal of the Roman world. Arranged in seventeen books, this paradigm of geographical writing explores the limits of the territories that Rome had established at the beginning of her imperial period. A Greek, and thus belonging to the nation that to the Roman psyche represented the old intellectual order, Strabo, incorporating information from diverse secondary sources into his first-hand discoveries, provides a cornucopia of verbal images as to how the Romans viewed the contemporary and past worlds.

This Aldine edition post-dated by 47 years the famous Roman edition of 1469 that featured the Latin translation of Guarinus Veronensis and Gregorius Tiphernas (see sale in these rooms, 10 October 2006, Wardington Atlases and Geographies Part Two, lot 492). The text of this Greek editio princeps was taken from so corrupt a manuscript (now Paris gr. 1395) that Diamant Coraÿ compared it to the Augean stable.