RAMSAY, M.

Les Voyages de Cyrus, Avec un Discours sur la Mythologie.

Amsterdam, Pierre & Mortier, 1728.

8vo. In contemporary vellum. Light wear to extremities and internally a few leaves with miscolouring. An overall nice copy. (8), 187, (3), 180 pp. + 2 frontispieces. 

Second edition of Ramsay's work on an imaginary tour of the ancient world undertaken by Cyrus, founder of the Persian Empire. He meets famous figures such as Pythagoras and Zoroaster who give him lessons on how a wise leader should act. The work because very popular and was published in numerous editions.

"Les Voyages de Cyrus was first published in 1727 and became a bestseller in France and then in Britain after being translated into English by Nathaniel Hooke, nephew of the Jacobite agent of the same name. Ramsay’s work imagines the travels of Cyrus the Great, the 6^th-century BC founder of the first Persian Empire. Cyrus’s early life had been fictionalised by Xenophon of Athens as a way to promote his own political and moral philosophy and Ramsay uses this device to drive his own narrative. The work is also strongly influenced by Archbishop Fénelon’s Les aventures de Télémaque, fils d’Ulysse (The adventures of Telemachus, son of Ulysses). Though Fénelon’s work appears to be set in the time of Homer’s heroes it was immediately seen as a scathing attack on the autocratic rule of Louis XIV and the self-indulgent nature of aristocratic society. Ramsay also draws on the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, notably for a grisly event towards the end of Book 1." (National Library of Scotland).

Order-nr.: 60636