GELLIUS. Auli Gellii Noctium Atticarum libri XX prout supersunt, quos ad libros MSStos novo & multo labore exegerunt, perpetuis notis & emendationibus illustraverunt Johannes Fredericus et Jacobus Gronovii. Accedunt Gasp. Scioppii integra MSStorum duorum codicum collatio, Petri Lambecii lucubrationes Gellianae, & ex Lud. Carrionis castigationibus utilia excerpta, ut & selecta variaque commentaria ab Ant. Thysio & Jac. Oiselio congesta. Leiden (Lugduni Batavorum), Apud Cornelium Boutesteyn & Johannem du Vivié, 1706. 4to. (XXXVI),903,(63 indices) p. Vellum 25.5 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 227931653; Neue Pauly Suppl. 2, p. 261; Schweiger 2,379: 'Noch immer sehr gesuchte Ausgabe und durch die neueste Bearbeitung nicht entbehrlich gemacht'; Dibdin 1,341: 'This edition (...) has as much literary merit as any of the Dutch editions of the classics in 4to. The notes of other critics are selected with judgment, and the explanatory remarks of Gronovius must give every scholar the most exalted idea of his singular erudition'; Moss 2,204/5; Fabricius/Ernesti 3,10: 'Haec editio repetita est'. Ernesti calls this edition 'luculenta'; Brunet 2,2 1524: 'Édition la meilleure qui ait paru jusqu'ici'; Spoelder p. 527, Delft 1) (Details: Prize copy of the Schola Latina of the city of Delft, without the prize. Back with 5 raised bands. Short title in ink in the second compartment. Gilt double fillet borders on both boards, gilt fleur-de-lis in all 4 corners; gilt Y in the center of both boards. Engraved frontispiece by Goeree/Sluyter, depicting the Roman author in his study at his desk; he has just started writing the first sentence of the last chapter of his book (liber XX, caput 11) on the role of papyrus in front of him; we read: 'P. Lavinii liber est non'; in front of Gellius are burning oil lamps; through the window one sees a moonlit Athens. Title in red and black. Engraved scene of a walled city, presumably Athens, on the title) (Condition: Vellum age-toned, somewhat soiled and scratched. Small stain on the frontcover. Front flyleaf and the prize gone. Front joint partly split. Small stamp on the title. Some foxing) (Note: The 'Noctes Atticae' of the Roman author Aulus Gellius, ca. A.D. 130 - ca. 180, contain many delightful scenes which he collected during his student days at Athens. The 'Attic Nights' is in fact a 'collection of mainly short chapters, dealing with a great variety of topics: philosophy, history, law, grammar, literary criticism, textual questions and many others'. (...) 'the great usefulness of the Noctes Atticae is derived from the preservation of countless fragments of earlier writers'. (OCD 2nd ed. p. 460) § The editions of classical writers of Latin prose produced by the Dutch scholar of German origin Johann Friedrich Gronov, 1611-1671, mark a epoch in the study of Livy, the Senecas, Tacitus and Gellius. (Sandys 2,319/21) He published his first Gellius edition in 1651, which is praised by Fabricius/Ernesti as 'emendatissimam'. Johann Friedrich was appointed 'professor eloquentiae' at the 'Athenaeum Illustre' of Deventer in 1642. Here he started a period of continuous and fruitful scholarly activity. In 1658 he came to Leiden to succeed Daniel Heinsius as professor of Greek and History. In 1687 the son of Johann Friedrich, Jacobus (Jakob) Gronovius, 1645-1716, who was professor of classics at Leiden from 1679 till his death, produced a new edition of his father's Gellius. He added to it the commentary written by his father at an earlier date. This commentary only covers the books I-IX. In 1706 Jacobus Gronovius published another revised and augmented edition. It contains a great number of observations of Antony Thys, or Antonius Thysius, ca. 1603-1665, professor of 'Poiesis' of the University at Leiden, and Jacobus Oiselius, 1631-1686, and Johannes Fredricus Gronovius, the father of Jacobus. It offers also the collations of 2 manuscripts made by the German scholar Kasper Schoppe, or Gasparus Scioppius, 1599-1649. Jacobus Gronovius received those collations, he tells in the 'Dedicatio' from the Italian publisher/librarian Antonio Magliabechi, 1633-1714, who possessed a Gellius edition once owned and annotated by Schioppius. ('Scias' writes Magliabechi to Gronovius, 'igitur servari in mea Bibliotheca (...) Gellium ipsa Scioppii manu adnotatum, & variantibus lectionibus non uno in loco illustratum'. (p. *4 recto) This edition also offers some 'excerpta' from the corrections of the Belgian latinist Louis Carrion, or Ludovicus Carrio, 1547-1595, who had published a Gellius edition in 1585 in Paris) (Provenance: The stamp on the title reads: 'P.C. Molhuijsen'. Philipp Christiaan Molhuijsen, 1870-1944, is best known as chief librarian of the Royal Library at The Hague, as editor of the Correspondence of Grotius, and editor of the NNBW, the 'Nieuw Nederlandsch Biographisch Woordenboek'. He studied classics in Leyden, and published in 1896 a dissertation, 'De tribus Homeri Odysseae codicibus antiquissimis'. In 1897 he started his bibliographic career as librarian of the Library of the University at Leiden. From 1911 on he was the leading force of the Dutch Biographic Dictionary, the 'Nieuw Nederlandsch Biographisch Woordenboek', better known as NNBW. In 1921 he was appointed chief librarian of the 'Koninklijke Bibliotheek' at The Hague. He also produced the first 2 volumes of the correspondence of Hugo Grotius, 1928-1937) (Collation: *4 (including frontispiece and title), 2*2, 3*-5*4; A - 6F4 (leaf 6F4 blank) (Photographs on request) (Heavy book, may require extra shipping costs)
Book number: 150550 Euro 400.00

Keywords: (Oude Druk), (Rare Books), Altertumswissenschaft, Gellius, Gronovius, Latin literature, Prize copy, Prize copy Delft, antike altertum antiquity, classical philology, römische Literatur