Details
[not before 11] April 1502
POLLUX, Julius (ca. 130 - ca. 188, Polydeuces of Naucratis). Vocabularium, Gk. Interpolated epitome of Arethas (ca. 900, Archbishop of Caesarea). Ed. Aldo Manuzio. Super-chancery 2° (306 x 205mm). Collation: A-B4 (A1r title to Latin index, A1v-4v Latin index, B1r title to Greek index, B1v-4v Greek index); a-n8 (a1r title, a1v publisher's dedication to Elia Caprioli of Brescia [d. 1519], n8r quire register and colophon, n8v blank). 112 leaves. Greek types 3:84 (text and index) and 4:79 (dedication), roman 10:82 (title and index), italic 1:80 (dedication). 55 lines and headline, numbered double columns.
PREFACE: In his dedication to emperor Commodus the author called his work Onomasticon and claimed as its distinction not so much copiousness of terms as a fine choice of them. The vocabulary is divided into ten books and arranged not alphabetically but by subject. In order to render all this material more accessible, Aldus has added an index in Latin and Greek and keyed it to the columns by the use of arabic numerals. The Latin not for the benefit of Caprioli, who is so learned in Greek and thus so closely allied with Taberio [the dedicatee of Stephanus the Byzantine, see lot 34] that to them the old Greek saying applies: "two bodies, yet one soul;" but for those who need help with reading the Greeks. He dedicates the Pollux to Elia, who will value it and remember Aldus's name each time he sees the book in his library, because the volume can be regarded as the twin of and will surely by many be bound together with the recently published Stephanus, whose dedicatee is his great spiritual twin Giovanni Taberio.
BINDING: early-19th-century Italian vellum, gilt spine and morocco lettering-pieces. PROVENANCE: Marc-Antoine Muret (1526-85), one of the great figures of French humanism, who taught at Rome from 1563, author of among other works Juvenilia (Paris 1552) and Orationes ... Hymni sacri (Aldine Press 1575), the Latin marginalia to col. 351 are probably his autograph notes (ON CHILDREN'S GAMES); Rome, Jesuit College, 17th-century inscription on title Collij Roma soc. Jesu Catal. inscript. ex biblioth. Mureti; F. Calander, formerly at the magistrates' library at Ferrara (19th-century inscription)
EDITIO PRINCEPS. "Aldus' objective must have been to supplement the range of lexicographical works available to students. Pollux provided a wide survey of Attic usage, with a good deal of information about the culture of classical Athens. He wrote at the height of the Atticist movement in the second half of the second century, and his attempt to guide his contemporaries in the niceties of the Attic idiom which they all wished to write, besides being fine evidence of the archaising movement, has its uses for the modern scholar. But it is scarcely an instrument to put into the hands of beginners" (Wilson p. 137-38). FINE ASSOCIATION COPY; Muret, commentator of Aristotle and Xenophon, was a friend of Scaliger's and teacher of Montaigne's. Isaac 12776; Adams P-1787; Hoffmann III, 260; Dionisotti & Orlandi XXXIV; Murphy 42; Sansoviniana 58; Laurenziana 57; R 32:1
POLLUX, Julius (ca. 130 - ca. 188, Polydeuces of Naucratis). Vocabularium, Gk. Interpolated epitome of Arethas (ca. 900, Archbishop of Caesarea). Ed. Aldo Manuzio. Super-chancery 2° (306 x 205mm). Collation: A-B4 (A1r title to Latin index, A1v-4v Latin index, B1r title to Greek index, B1v-4v Greek index); a-n8 (a1r title, a1v publisher's dedication to Elia Caprioli of Brescia [d. 1519], n8r quire register and colophon, n8v blank). 112 leaves. Greek types 3:84 (text and index) and 4:79 (dedication), roman 10:82 (title and index), italic 1:80 (dedication). 55 lines and headline, numbered double columns.
PREFACE: In his dedication to emperor Commodus the author called his work Onomasticon and claimed as its distinction not so much copiousness of terms as a fine choice of them. The vocabulary is divided into ten books and arranged not alphabetically but by subject. In order to render all this material more accessible, Aldus has added an index in Latin and Greek and keyed it to the columns by the use of arabic numerals. The Latin not for the benefit of Caprioli, who is so learned in Greek and thus so closely allied with Taberio [the dedicatee of Stephanus the Byzantine, see lot 34] that to them the old Greek saying applies: "two bodies, yet one soul;" but for those who need help with reading the Greeks. He dedicates the Pollux to Elia, who will value it and remember Aldus's name each time he sees the book in his library, because the volume can be regarded as the twin of and will surely by many be bound together with the recently published Stephanus, whose dedicatee is his great spiritual twin Giovanni Taberio.
BINDING: early-19th-century Italian vellum, gilt spine and morocco lettering-pieces. PROVENANCE: Marc-Antoine Muret (1526-85), one of the great figures of French humanism, who taught at Rome from 1563, author of among other works Juvenilia (Paris 1552) and Orationes ... Hymni sacri (Aldine Press 1575), the Latin marginalia to col. 351 are probably his autograph notes (ON CHILDREN'S GAMES); Rome, Jesuit College, 17th-century inscription on title Collij Roma soc. Jesu Catal. inscript. ex biblioth. Mureti; F. Calander, formerly at the magistrates' library at Ferrara (19th-century inscription)
EDITIO PRINCEPS. "Aldus' objective must have been to supplement the range of lexicographical works available to students. Pollux provided a wide survey of Attic usage, with a good deal of information about the culture of classical Athens. He wrote at the height of the Atticist movement in the second half of the second century, and his attempt to guide his contemporaries in the niceties of the Attic idiom which they all wished to write, besides being fine evidence of the archaising movement, has its uses for the modern scholar. But it is scarcely an instrument to put into the hands of beginners" (Wilson p. 137-38). FINE ASSOCIATION COPY; Muret, commentator of Aristotle and Xenophon, was a friend of Scaliger's and teacher of Montaigne's. Isaac 12776; Adams P-1787; Hoffmann III, 260; Dionisotti & Orlandi XXXIV; Murphy 42; Sansoviniana 58; Laurenziana 57; R 32:1