Diogenes Laertius

4to (190 x 136mm.), woodcut printer's device on title-page and final verso, woodcut initials and headpieces, eighteenth-century calf, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco lettering-piece, red speckled edges, K2, P1-3 and aa4 stained, occasional light damp-staining

IA 153.807; VD16 D1836

EDITIO PRINCEPS. Diogenes Laertius compiled his lives and sayings of Greek philosophers in the early third century AD; it is considered the earliest extant history of Greek philosophy and an important source for Epicurus. It is now considered that this edition was based on an inferior fifteenth-century manuscript in the library of Bohuslav Hasištein z Lobkovic (Boldan and Urbánková, Rekonstrukce knihovny Bohuslava Hasišteijnkého z Lobkovic, Prague, 2009, p.643). The manuscript came to Basel through the agency of Matthaeus Aurogallus, a Greek scholar at Wittenberg, where Bohuslav's nephew and heir was rector. Aurogallus is mentioned in the preface to this edition, and he also supplied other manuscripts from Bohuslav's collection to be printed by Froben.