About this Item
September 1513. Two parts in one volume. Folio (306 x 201 mm). [32], 502, [2]; 439 [1] pp. Signatures: (1)12 (2)4 (a-z)8 aa10 (bb-hh)8 ii4; (A-DD)8 EE4, with both blanks, 2/4 and ii4 present. Title in Greek and Latin, main text in Greek. Greek type 3bis: 90, Roman 12:90; 48 lines and headline. Aldine device (Fletcher no. f4) on title and colophon leaf verso at end, capital spaces with guide letters. 17th century calf over thick boards, rebacked before 1876 with brown morocco leather spine, renewed endpapers, dyed edges, spine with 5 raised bands, gilt ruling and lettering, gilt-stamped coat of arms of the Royal Society of London at foot (boards and raised bands rubbed, board edges worn, corners scuffed). Title dust-soiled and spotted, and with edge chipping at head, occasional minor dust-soiling and spotting mostly to outer margins in places, first two gatherings with light brown staining at gutter and top margin, some small, unobtrusive wormholes in first and last leaves, final leaf EE4 attached to final flyleaf. Provenance: Willibald Pirckheimer* (large bookplate by Albrecht Dürer on front pastedown, 171 x 119 mm, with Latin, Hebrew and Greek headline, signed "Liber Bilibaldi Pirckheimer"); Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel; Royal Society of London; Walter Ashburner**, Florence (ink stamps to title and some pages elsewhere); Pierre Bergé (bookplate to first flyleaf), a few markings and ink annotations in Greek, in Pirckheimer's own hand. In all a very good, crisp and extremely wide-margined copy printed on strong paper and with important provenance. Visit our website for more information and images! ---- EDITIO PRINCEPS OF PLATO'S WORKS IN GREEK AND WITH IMPORTANT PROVENANCE: The Pirckheimer--Earl of Arundel--Duke of Norfolk--Royal Society--Ashburner--Bergé copy. The Greek text was first printed in Venice by Aldus Manutius in September 1513 as part of the complete works of Plato edited by Marcus Musurus. This edition was also the basis for the Latin translation of the Pseudo-Platonic Demodokos (Dialogi Platonis Axiochus, see Aldus edition, part II p.390ff.) that the humanist Willibald Pirckheimer brought out in Nuremberg in 1523 with the printer Friedrich Peypus. Pirckheimer's teacher of Greek at Padua in 1490 was no other than Marcus Musurus, a Cretan, who edited several Greek Classics for Aldus including Plato's Opera for which "the transmitted text, though by no means perfect, was in a much better state than that of most authors, and therefore did not invite editorial intervention on the same scale. In the Laws Musurus is thought to have made few if any alterations to the text." (N.G. Wilson, p.151). The works of Plato in general stand at the origin of the Western tradition of scientific inquiry as well as that of philosophical thought. Socrates, by his ceaseless and methodical questioning, reported in the dialogues, laid the foundation of the scientific method. Plato's own enthusiasm for mathematics and astronomy is evident in his works, and he was credited in Antiquity with having promoted the advance of geometry in particular. The Timaeus, which was available to the Latin Middle Ages in the 4th-century translation by Chalcidius, offered a cosmography, a theory of atomism, and a physiology that regarded the brain as the organ of consciousness. Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of Plato's works was printed in Florence in 1484 and reprinted in Venice in 1491. The Aldine Plato in Greek was dedicated to the new Pope, Leo X. According to Aldus' preface, . . . Visit our website for further reading! LITERATURE: Norman 1714; PMM 27 (rem.); Ahmanson-Murphy 114; Clemons and Fletcher 17; Renouard Alde, 62:4; see Lowry, The World of Aldus Manutius, p.205; Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy, pp.151-2; Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice. Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe, 1962; Meder, Dürer-Katalog, 280-1. Seller Inventory # 003389
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