The third Aldine: with the editio princeps of the Theogony

Theocritus / Hesiod / Theognis et al. Idyllia [Greek]. Add: Theognis; Dionysius Cato: Disticha (Tr: Maximus Planudes); Sententiae Septem sapientium; De invidia; Hesiodus: Opera et dies, Theogonia [Greek]. With table and colophon in Latin.

€ 35,000.00

The editio princeps of Hesiod's Opera omnia, published as part of the second and most celebrated edition of Theocritus (thirty eclogues by the father of pastoral poetry; the complete text would not appear until the Kallierges edition of 1516), together with the Distichs of Theognis and other Greek opuscula. This is the third book ever produced by the famed Aldus Manutius. "This edition is of great rarity; it is very beautifully printed and is considered, in typographical elegance, inferior to none of the productions of Aldus" (Moss).

To a certain extent, this is a reprint of the edition printed at Milan around 1481 (in which Hesiod's Works and Days had already appeared), but there are large additions, which Aldus lists and to some extent comments upon in his brief preface addressed to Guarino. From this it would seem clear that it was the works by Hesiod which were of the greatest importance. Of the other, shorter texts, one is the Greek version by Planudes of Cato's (whoever the author was, he was, as Aldus puts it, "doctus & lectu dignus") Distichs, a school text which was one of the most printed Latin works of the 15th century. Aldus says that Franciscus Roscius of Verona had reported to him a rather damaged manuscript of this some thirty years previously.

As has been variously remarked, there are two variant issues of the same edition, ten leaves from p. 77 to 80 and from p. 85 to 100 having been reset. This copy is of the corrected second, final issue, called "more valuable" by Renouard: without word divisions on page F1r and including the verses on the death of Adonis on G6v.

A very pretty copy of this much-sought Aldine with fine provenance, containing the first printing of the Theogony.