Flora and Fauna
ARISTOTLE; THEOPHRASTUS; Theodorus GAZA and Pietro ALCIONIO, translators.
Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum de Plantis & earum Causis, cuncta fere, quae Deus opt. max. homini contemplanda exhibuit, ad amussim complectentes: nunc iam suo restitutae nitori, & mendis omnibus quoad fieri potuit, repurgatae. Lyons, [Nicolas Bacquenois for] Guillaume Gazeau, 1552.
Two parts in one volume, 8vo, pp. [lxxx], 495, [17]; [lvi], 399, [15], bound without final blank; woodcut device to each title-page, woodcut initials; sporadic light toning, title-page slightly soiled with some offsetting of ink, waterstaining to first few leaves, paperflaw to γ4 with slight loss of text, first few leaves and final quire crudely repaired at fore-edge, small marginal wormhole to end of first part, otherwise a good copy; bound in seventeenth-century speckled sheep, spine richly gilt in compartments, gilt lettering-piece to spine, edges sprinkled red; small wormtrack to upper joint, a few small scuffs to boards, extremities very slightly rubbed.
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Historiae. Cum de natura Animalium, tum de Plantis & earum Causis, cuncta fere, quae Deus opt. max. homini contemplanda exhibuit, ad amussim complectentes: nunc iam suo restitutae nitori, & mendis omnibus quoad fieri potuit, repurgatae.
A union of Aristotle on animals and Theophrastus on plants, the fundamental texts from Ancient Greece on zoology and botany, in the translations of Gaza and Alcionio.
The text is based on the 1534 Basel edition by Andreas Cratander, retaining his preface to the reader, and edited by Joannes Jordanus, whose preface dated Lyons, 1550, appears at the start of the second volume. Theophrastus had studied with Plato (perhaps) and Aristotle before becoming head of the Lyceum in Athens. Like Aristotle, he composed numerous treatises on wide-ranging subjects, as reported by Diogenes Laertius, but only his writings on plants survived (almost) intact; in these, ‘he so far surpassed his predecessors that the history of the subject in the west can be said effectively to begin with him’ (OCD). Theophrastus and Aristotle had spent time researching the natural world together on the island of Lesbos in the 320s BC.
This issue by Nicolas Bacquenois (c. 1518–1571) was also offered for sale by Jacques Giunta, Guillaume Rouillé, and Thibaud Payen; the privilege at the start of the second part names Rouillé only. This is the last book printed by Bacquenois in Lyons, as he would move to Rheims shortly thereafter at the request of Cardinal Charles de Lorraine to become the first printer there.
BM STC French, p. 25; USTC 154723; Baudrier VIII, p. 6; von Gültlingen XI: Bacquenois 24; Pettegree and Walsby, French Books 88244; not in Adams.