VALERIUS MAXIMUS.
Dictorum et factorum memorabilium libri novem.
Venice, Aldus Manutius, 1502 (-1503).
8vo. (15x10,3 cm). Bound in a later cardboard binding with gilt spine. Gilt title label to spine. Wear to hinges and edges, and boards slightly rubbed. Corners bumped. Part of A1 with printed title cut out and pasted on to a blank leaf that has been inserted before A2. Exlibris pasted to inside of front (Fr. Chasté & Richard Zoozmann) and back (Richard Zoozmann) board. With W.H. Riehl's ownership signature (dated Augsburg 1852) to verso of pasted-in leaf at the front and to colophon-leaf. Scattered notes and underlinings in a near-contemporary hand, otherwise clean. With Aldus' woodcut printer's device to colophon. Upper right corner (blank) of colophon-leaf restored. Zoozmann's ownership signature and various notes in different hands to verso of colophon-leaf. Title-page missing and without the four leaves (with contents etc.) from the first issue (that are sometimes present, sometimes not). 211 leaves (out of a maximum of 216: [*]4A12 B-Z8 aa-cc8).
The rare second issue of the Aldus-edition of Valerius Maximus' 'Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri ix'. Towards the end of 1502, Aldus received a manuscript from Johann Spiesshaymer, the addresee of the introductory letter of the second issue, containing several additional chapters of the text (four chapters of 'De neglecta religione', 'De simulata religione' and 'De auspiciis'), previously unknown to Aldus, which led him to publish a second issue less than a year after the appearance of the first. To this second issue Aldus added, in addition to the newly discovered passages, a subtitle ('Exempla quatuor et viginti nuper inventa ante caput de ominibus') and an introductory letter to Johann Spiesshaymer. The first quire (A) of the second issue is thus the only deviation from the first printing. Although Aldus, in his letter to Spiesshaymer, claims to have consulted earlier editions of Valerius Maximus ('in aliis omnibus Valerii exemplaribus quae ipse viderim'), he seems to believe that the passages added to his second issue were printed here for the first time. However, these had already appeared in the 1475 edition printed in Paris by P. Caesaris and J. Stol. The present copy lacks the first four leaves, i.e. the title-page, the introductory letter to Jan Lubanski and the table of contents; but since the table of contents did not match the text of the second issue, it is not unreasonable to assume that copies without a table of contents went into circulation. Valerius Maximus wrote during the reign of Tiberius. His 'Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings' is a collection of moral and philosophical exempla. The work achieved immense popularity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and is transmitted in more than 800 manuscripts. The copy belonged to the prominent German professor and novelist Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823-1897) and carries his ownership signature to verso of the first leaf. Adams II, 303, 83; Renouard 1502.10.
Order-nr.: 60463
DKK 7.500,00