PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius. (Historia naturalis) ... historia ...

Estimate

£1,000 - £1,500

PLINIUS SECUNDUS, Gaius.
(Historia naturalis) ... historia mundi libri
XXXVIl. denuo ad vetustos codices collati, et plurimis locis emendati, ut patet ex. adiunctis iterum que auctis Sigismundi Gelenij Annotationibus. In calce operis copiosus Index est additus.
Basileae: [apud Hier. Frobenium, et Nic. Episcopium,] 1549.
Folio, 36), 671, [1) b., (220). With numerous metalout initials by Meister I.F. throughout. Contemporary Swiss pigskin over bevelled wooden boards, spine with five raised bands, sides tooled in blind with large roll of Old Testament heroes (not in Haebler) outside two panels formed from a smaller roll of humanists, brass catches, clasps lacking, the binding dated 1553 in gilt on upper cover. Spine with title in early hand lettering at head, press and date sometime added below, gilt arms in lower compartment now faded. Inscription on title dated 1717, bookplates of H. M. Brower and Leroy Arthur Sugarman on front pastedown. Final gathering damp-stained at lower margin, a few leaves evenly browned. 390mm x 260mm.
A fine copy in contemporary pigskin of Pliny's Historia naturalis in the edition of Sigismund Gelenius (c. 1498-1554), 'one of the most learned men of the sixteenth-century' (M. Lécuy). The Bohemian scholar Zikmund Hruby z Jelení, better known as Gelenius, moved to Basel in 1524, where he lived first in Erasmus' household. He spent the remainder of his life working for the Froben press as a scholar, editor, corrector, and translator from the Greek, even declining a position as professor of Greek at Nürnberg for which he was recommended by Melanchthon in 1525 and 1526. Erasmus thought highly of him, and there is evidence that he relied on his collaboration for a number of editions nominally his alone, including his 1525 Froben-printed edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis. In addition to Erasmus' dedicatory epistle, reprinted from that edition, and the thirty-seven books of the Historia Naturalis, this edition includes Gelenius' 'Castigationes' and an extensive index by Joannes Camers (Giovanni Ricucci Vellini). First published in 1539, Gelenius edition of Pliny was reprinted by Froben three times in the first half of the sixteenth century.