Pollux, Vocabularium, Venice, Aldus, 1502, later calf

Pollux, Julius

Ονομασκτικον. Vocabularium. (Venice: Aldus, April 1502)

Super-Chancery folio (316 x 203mm.), text in Greek, late eighteenth-century Italian brown morocco gilt, modern slipcase, rebacked

FIRST EDITION. A large crisp copy of this early encyclopedia, written towards the end of the second century AD. It is essentially a listing of words gathered by subject but is an important and encyclopedic witness of the culture and history of various aspects of the Greek world, from religion to the arts to athletics to merchants to medicine. As a concession to the reader with limited Greek, Aldus includes a table of contents in Latin as well as Greek.

LITERATURE:

Aldo Manuzio tipografo 57; Edit16 36138; Renouard 1502/15

PROVENANCE:

Peter Leigh, armorial bookplate