THE MONUMENTAL FIRST FRENCH EDITION OF THE HISTORIES OF HERODOTUS

HERODOTUS.

Les neuf livres des Histoires. Plus un recueil de George Gemiste dict Plethon, des choses auenues depuis la iournée de Mantinée. Le tout traduit de Grec en Francais par Pierre Salia.

Paris, Iean Roigny, 1556.

Folio. In contemporary linp vellum, with three (of four) of the original vellum ties. Binding with wear and inner hinge weak, but in completely original state, with no restorations. Only some light scattered brownspotting and a worm-tract to inner margin, just occasionally touching a few letters. Book-plate to pasted-down front end-paper. A lovely copy. (4), CCXLIII ff.

The scarce first edition of Saliat's translation of the complete Histories of Herodotus, being the extremely popular first French edition and arguably the most important French edition of the work ever published.

Saliat's monumental 1556-translation of Herodutus was extremely influential end widely used and quoted. It greatly influenced the way that Herodotus was used and understood in Renaissance France. It was used by virtually all contemporary French intellectuals as the main reference - as for instance Sandys points out, it is from this that all of Montaigne's Herodotus-quotations are taken (Sandys, vol. II, p. 197).

Pierre Saliat had published a small work in 1552 consisting the the first three books of Herodotus, and in 1556, his monumental translation of the complete work appeared; for the first time, all nine books were accessible in the French language. "Little is known of Saliat's life except that he had produced two previous translations from Latin, Erasmus' "On Methods of Instructing Children" and a collection of Roman speeches. Both translations of Herdotus are dedicated to the king, Henry II, and Saliat notes that the work on the first three books had taken him six years to complete and that it had taken him a further five years to translate the remaining six books. In the preface to the 1556 translation, Saliat compares at length the scale and grandeur of the Persian Wars with Henry's recent invasion of Germany. Henry's deeds are portrayed as greater than those described by Herodotus... [The preface] reads as a salutary encomium of Henry's military and political prowess." (Brill's Companion to the Reception of Herodotus in Antiquity and Beyond, p. 127). In short, Saliat views Herodotus' work as a manual for or collection of examples of warfare that is fully transferable to other times, rather than a mere memoralization of great deeds.

Graesse: III:256.

Order-nr.: 55452