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Folio (340 x 210mm). [48], 731pp., [25, index] (p. 709 misnumb. 711; 727 misnumb. 627). Signatures: [alpha]-[zeta]4; a-z6; aa-zz6; aaa-nnn6; ooo-ttt4. Large woodcut Estienne device of olive tree with scroll motto NOLI ALTUM SAPERE ("Be not high-minded") on title, woodcut ornaments and initials throughout. Title page printed in red and black. Text in Latin and Greek in parallel columns. Printed marginalia. Later mottled calf; (lacking the four plates, scuffed and worn with age, some marginal dampstaining, most severe at beginning and end, otherwise good). Unidentified armorial bookplate (ox under crest of helmet) pasted on verso of title. Sold as is. The 1592 edition of Herodotus Histories printed by Henri Estienne. It follows the first Henricus Stephanus edition, Paris: 1570 (Greek only); this the second edition Geneva: 1592 (Greek and Latin, the Latin version being that of Valla, revised and corrected by Stephanus); and another edition published in Frankfurt: 1608, by Gottfried Jungermann, which made considerable improvements on this work by dividing the books into chapters. It is this latter edition from which the present text is reprinted, with the addition of some remarks of Patus, and some emendations of the Latin version of Valla. Herodotus Histories is clearly the centerpiece of the edition (pp. 1-635), but the focus of the ancillary material very much highlights 16th-century interest in the East. And this is evident not just by the inclusion of material from Ctesias (pp. 678-97) but also the subject of the woodcut images which pertain solely to Eastern structures and additional material included at the end of the volume (not mentioned in the title), De Persarum legibus & institutis ex diuersis historicis ( About Persian laws and institutions from diverse historians ) (pp. 698-724). The bulk of the edition is devoted to Herodotus Histories (pp. 1-635). Herodotus (c. 484-420s BCE) is the earliest extant prose author in the Western tradition. He was a Greek from Halicarnassus (modern Bodrum in Turkey). The nine books of his Histories (which title in Greek means, simply, Enquiries ), covers the time period 650-479 BCE and focus on what led up to the great wars between the Persian Empire and the Greeks in the early 5th century and how these wars unfolded. Henry II Estienne, also known by the Latinized form of his name Stephanus, was one of the most prominent scholars of the 16th century as well as ran one of the most important printing houses. Adams H398, p. 536; Brunet III, 122; Moss I, p. 456; Renouard, 198. Seller Inventory # LD8072
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