‘Fame Has the Greatest Weight in War’
CURTIUS RUFUS, Quintus.
De rebus gestis Alexandri Magni. Editio prioribus correctior. Toulouse, Pierre Robert, [1714–1760].
12mo, pp. 396; woodcut title-page containing a medallion portrait of Alexander and woodcut lettering with a letterpress imprint, woodcut initial and headpiece, typographic headpieces; a very good copy; bound in contemporary vellum, faded manuscript lettering to spine; binding a little soiled, front hinge cracked at foot, front flyleaf pasted to front pastedown.
A rare Toulouse printing of a rhetorical and moralising history of Alexander the Great.
This edition fills in the textual lacuna with a ‘Supplementum’ for the missing books I and II, in order to create a continuous narrative, running from Alexander’s birth to the partition of his territories at Babylon in 323 BC, in the aftermath of his death. The educational aspect of the book includes a ‘Gnomologia Curtiana’, a list of sayings extracted from the text, in alphabetical order.
The Robert printing and bookselling dynasty in Toulouse began with Pierre’s father Guillaume (active 1701–1728), followed by Pierre (active 1714–1763) and his brother Jean-Pierre (died 1758), and ending with Pierre’s grandson Jacques-Jean-Marie-Joseph (died 1803). Robert’s shop was next to the Jesuit College, which presumably provided them with a regular market for schoolbooks like this. The date of this publication is based on Pierre’s known printing activity.
Rare: we have located just two copies, both in France (Toulouse and Pau). We have not found another edition printed by Robert in Toulouse.