PERSIUS. Auli Persii Flacci Satirarum liber. Isaacus Casaubonus recensuit, & commentario libro illustravit. Ad virum amplisissmum D. Achillem Harlaeum senatus principem. (Volume 2: Isaaci Casauboni in Persii Satiras Liber commentarius. Eiusdem Persiana Horatii imitatio) Paris (Parisiis), Apud Hieronymum Drouart, 1615. 8vo. 2 volumes in 1: (XV),(1 blank),43,(4),(1 blank); (XXXII),558,(26 index) p. Vellum 17.5 cm (Ref: Schweiger 2,711; Graesse 5,212; Ebert 16282; Smitskamp, 'The Scaliger collection', no. 116) (Details: 5 thongs laced through the joints. The first title shows an engraving of a 'thiasos': a drunken Bacchus is carried off by a bunch of satyrs, accompanied by some revellers. The second title has an oval woodcut printer's mark; it depicts a thisle flank by the initials A and D. of Ambrosius (Ambroise) Drouart, the brother of Hieronymus (Jerôme). Hieronymus kept using his brother's printer's after his death in 1608; the motto, in fact 2 mottoes, reads: 'Nul ne s'y frote', 'patere aut abstine' ('let no one meddle', and 'bear of forebear'). The first volume contains a preface, the Latin text of the Satires and 18 pages with 'Glossae veteres in Persium'. The second volume contains the commentary of Casaubon) (Condition: Vellum age-tanned and somewhat soiled. All four ties gone. Endpapers worn and somewhat soiled. First title dustsoiled, and its right margin is very thumbed) (Note: The well-born and well-to-do Roman poet Aulus Persius Flaccus, 34-62 A.D., produced during his short life one book (libellus) with 6 satires, together 650 hexameters. 'They are well described as Horatian diatribes transformed by Stoic rhetoric'. (OCD 2nd ed. p. 805) The first is 'on the decay of literary taste in his own time and the neglect of the manly Republican authors, the second on vanity of wealth and luxury, the third on idleness, the fourth on self-knowledge, the fifth on true liberty, the sixth on the proper use of riches'. (H.J. Rose, 'A History of Latin Literature', London, 1967, p. 377) The style is obscure, contorted and crammed with allusions to Horace and Lucilius. He was much read in antiquity and admired as a moralist in the Middle Ages, but now he is found dull, too difficult, cryptic, too far fetched, and too complicated. 'So fühlte sich zumal das 19. Jh. von seinem vielschichtigen Stil abgestossen, während sich erst neuerdings eine gerechtere Würdigung durchsetzen beginnt'. (Neu Pauly, 9, 619) A specimen of this new appraisal is the following quote: 'The elements of composition in Persius' satires - words and ideas, images, steps in the argument, registers of speech and literary style, speeches in dramatic dialogue- are abruptly or peculiarly, even bizarrely, combined. One is faced by an unpredictable, surprising series of conceptions; continuous attention is necessary if one is to understand. However, the surprises and incongruities are often observably intelligent, apt and curiously artistic. From a literary point of view, the quality of continual surprise in Persius' style makes the Satires amusing to read'. (J.R. Bond, 'Persius, the Satires', Warminster 1980, p. 5) § This 1615 Persius edition is a reissue of the edition previously published in 1605, also from the presses of the Drouart brothers. The Latin text was based on that which was edited by the French scholar Pithou in Paris in 1585. The edition of 1605 and its extensive commentary were produced by the French protestant scholar Isaac Casaubon, 1559-1614, the first critical commentator of Persius. His preface is a vigorous defense of Persius' Stoic earnestness end philosophic constancy. 'The ethical interest is strong in his Persius (1605), on which he had lectured at Geneva and Montpellier, and his commentary on the Stoic satirist, of which Scaliger said that the sauce was better than the meat, was reprinted in Germany as late as 1833, and has been ultimately merged in Conington's edition' (of 1872)) (Provenance: On the front pastedown the name: 'E.A. Groenman, 1839'. We found an Albertus Groenman, 1814-1861, member of the 'Provinciale Staten van Groningen' from 1851 till 1859, elected for Zuidhorn, profession manufacturer and merchant. He might have been the owner once) (Collation: a8, A8, b-c8, â8, ê8, A-Z8, 2A-2NO8, 2O4) (Photographs on request)
Book number: 120143 Euro 570.00

Keywords: (Oude Druk), (Rare Books), Latin literature, Persius, antike altertum antiquity, römische Literatur, satire, satyra