MACROBIUS. Aur. Theodosii Macrobi v.cl. & inlustris Opera. Ioh. Isacius Pontanus recensuit, & Saturnaliorum libros MS. ope auxit, ordinavit, & castigationes sive notas adiecit. Ad amplissimum virum Arnoldum Witfeldium Regni Daniae Cancellarium. Contenta hoc libro vide pagina sequenti, quibus accedunt I. Meursi breviores notae. Leiden, Ex Officina Plantiniana, Apud Franciscum Raphelengium, 1597. 8vo. (XVI),697,(55) p. Limp overlapping vellum. 17 cm (Ref: Schweiger 2,587: 'Eine englische Handschrift ist für die Verbesserung des Textes benutzt'; Ebert 12718: 'the notes are valuable'; Graesse 4,330) (Details: Printer's mark on the title: a pair of compasses, motto 'labore et sapientia') (Condition: Vellum soiled and wrinkled. A small piece of vellum has gone at the head of the spine. New leaf pasted on the front pastedown. Paper yellowing. Edges of the title slightly thumbed. Upper margin of the first gathering slightly & faintly waterstained. Small wormhole near the blank lower edge expertly & allmost invisibly repaired. Pencil numbers in the margin of liber 5 of the Saturnalia) (Note: Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, a Roman senator and a classical scholar of the early 5th century A.D. 'was a notable link between the cultures of antiquity and the Middle Ages'. He left us 3 works, the 'Saturnalia', his 'Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis', the 'Dream of Scipio', a commentary on a part of 'De Republica' of the Roman orator Cicero, and a work on grammar 'De differentiis et societatibus Graeci Latinique verbi'. The Saturnalia are a learned compilation in 7 books cast in dialogue form, in which the cultural life of the former generations is idealized. Macrobius' aim is to provide his son with all the necessary, but hard to come by scientific knowledge. He did so in the form of a banquet. Macrobius was inspired by the Ciceronian dialogues 'De Oratore' and 'De Republica'. 'Set during the Saturnalia of 383 A.D. it gathers several (conspicuously non-Christian) members of the aristocracy and their entourage to discuss matters ridiculous (...) and sublime, (...) above all the poetry of Virgil. Quarried from mostly unnamed sources - including Gellius, Seneca, Plutarch, and the tradition of scholastic commentary today known from Servius, the discussion presents Virgil as the master of all human knowledge'. More influential in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was the commentary of Macrobius on the 'Somnium Scipionis'. Macrobius uses Cicero's text (De Republica 6,10 ff) as the starting point for 'a thoroughly Neoplatonic treatment of (especially) cosmology and the soul's ascent to the One, with direct debts to Porphyry and Plotinus.' Discussed are matters of mathematics, physics, cosmology, astronomy, geography, ethics. The third work is often left out in other editions of the Opera of Macrobius. It consists in fact of summaries found in several manuscripts from 'De differentiis'. It deals with the differences and the similarities of the Greek and Latin verb. Macrobius' categories of differences were later used and expanded by Isidorus of Sevilla. With this 3 works Macrobius forged a kind of compendium of science and philosophy, which transmitted classical knowledge to the medieval world, and which was to hold a central position in the intellectual development of the West during the Middle Ages. His books belong to the basic sources of the scholastic movement and of medieval science. His work left traces in the works of Dante, Chaucer, Vives and Spenser. (Source for M. and the quotations: 'The Classical Tradition', Cambr. Mass., 2010, p. 553). The influence and popularity of Macrobius dwindled soon during the Renaissance. Schweiger records untill 1600 19 editions, and after 1600 till 1824 only 9 editions. The editor of this edition, the Dutch classical scholar and mathematician, Johannes Isaaczoon, better known as Johannes Isaac Pontanus, 1571-1639, was born at sea (hence his name), when his parents were on their way to Denmark. There he was for some time a helper of Tycho Brahe (NNBW I,1417, & ADB 26, 413/14). In a short 'Lector, amice' on the very last page Pontanus tells the reader that he has used the Stephanus edition of 1585, and an old Bologna edition of 1501. (The first one is according to Schweiger based on the edition of Camerarius of 1535, and the last one we could not trace in Schweiger, nor in KVK. There exists however a Macrobius which was published in Brescia in 1501) Pontanus furthermore tells in the introduction that he was able to restore vast lacunae in the text with the help of a very old English manuscript. Young Pontanus must have made in Leiden quite an impression. The text is preceded by a number of epigrammata of famous scholars in which Pontanus receives exuberant praise for having saved Macrobius, e.g. J.J. Scaliger, F. Dousa, F. Raphelengius, a long poem of Petrus Scriverius, and a Greek and Latin epigram of Hugo Grotius, who calls Pontanus the 'vindex', saviour of Macrobius. The text is followed by 117 pages filled with notes of Pontanus. The last 16 pages are filled with short notes of young Johannes Meursius, who was 18 years old in 1597, and still a student. Meursius was a child prodigy, who matriculated at the age of 12. He dedicates his notes to his 'praeceptor meo' the professor of Greek of the University of Leiden, Bonaventura Vulcanius. These short notes belong to the first fruits of this productive scholar. In 1606 Pontanus was appointed professor of Mathematics at the University of Harderwijk. In 1628 he produced a second edition) (Provenance: On the front pastedown in pencil: '17 mei, 1961', written by the Flemish linguist Walter Couvreur, 1914-1996, who was an Orientalist, and professor of Indoeuropean linguistics at the University of Gent. It indicates the date of aquisition. The place of acquisition he wrote on the flyleaf at the end: 'Parijs, Vrin') (Collation: *8, A-2X8, *-2*8, +8) (Photographs on request)
Book number: 120124 Euro 400.00

Keywords: (Oude Druk), (Rare Books), Altertum, Altertumswissenschaft, Antike, Antiquity, Cicero, Greek, Grotius, Latin linguistics, Latin literature, Macrobius, Meursius, Plantijn, Plantin, Pontanus, Saturnalia, Scipio, Somnium Scipionis, classical philology, griechische, klassische Philologie, lateinische Sprachwissenschaft, römische Literatur, verb, verbum