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PARUTA, Paolo. Discorsi politici...ne i quali si considerano diuersi fatti illustri, e memorabili di principi, e di republiche antiche, e moderne. Aggiontovi un suo Soliloquio, nelquale l'autore fa un breve essame di tutto il corso della sua vita. Venice: Domenico Niccolini da Sabbio, 1599.
4, woodcut portrait of the author on title, device on last page, with the fourth leaf blank (lacking end of part I and title of part II), 18th-century vellum.
FIRST EDITION. Paolo Paruta (d. 1598) held high offices in the Venetian Republic. As official historiographer, he wrote the history of the Venetians from 1513 to 1551 in Italian, adding to it the history of the war in Cyprus from 1570 to 1572. But Donodoni (History of Italian Literature, New York, 1969, I, p. 271) describes Paruta as fundamentally a political writer rather than a historian: "In the two books Dei discorsi politici, the main interest is in his reflections on the causes of the greatness of the Romans, which the politician attributes above all to the military education of that people and to its diplomatic capability". Parenti p. 289.
4, woodcut portrait of the author on title, device on last page, with the fourth leaf blank (lacking end of part I and title of part II), 18th-century vellum.
FIRST EDITION. Paolo Paruta (d. 1598) held high offices in the Venetian Republic. As official historiographer, he wrote the history of the Venetians from 1513 to 1551 in Italian, adding to it the history of the war in Cyprus from 1570 to 1572. But Donodoni (History of Italian Literature, New York, 1969, I, p. 271) describes Paruta as fundamentally a political writer rather than a historian: "In the two books Dei discorsi politici, the main interest is in his reflections on the causes of the greatness of the Romans, which the politician attributes above all to the military education of that people and to its diplomatic capability". Parenti p. 289.