Opera [= Works]

Small 8vo. [16], 1-697, [57] pp. Nineteenth century paneled calf with two gold rules on each board, spine in three compartments, gold lettering and gold rules on the spine. Marbled endpapers and pastedowns. Green silk bookmark bound-in. With the woodcut publisher's device on the title page and with woodcut initials. Edited by Joh. Pontanus. With an index and notes by J. Meursius. Adams 57. Graesse 330. Oxford Classical Dictionary, "Macrobius", 906-907. Macrobius was a North African writer and Neoplatonist. His surviving three works are the Saturnalia, a dialogue, a commentary on Cicero's the Dream of Scipio, and fragments of a grammar on the differences between Greek and Latin words. The Dream of Scipio is of special importance because it expounds neoplatonist theories on the cosmos, astronomy, the nature of numbers, and humankind's place in the universe. Macrobius was an important source for these views in the Middle Ages, as the ability to read ancient Greek dwindled due to the fall of the Roman Empire. A handsome copy of this important work in classical philosophy and ancient astronomy. A name on the title page, this owner annotated a few leaves, two gatherings have a faint dampstain to their bottom edge.…