Marbled and Parcel-Gilt Edges
FLORUS, L. Annaeus; Lucius AMPELIUS; Claude SAUMAISE, editor.
[Rerum romanarum libri IV and Epitome historiae romanae;] Cl. Salmasius addidit Lucium Ampelium [Liber memorialis] e cod. MS. nunquam antehac editum. Leiden, Elzevir, 1638.
12mo, pp. [viii], ‘536’ [recte 336], [16]; title copper-engraved, woodcut initials and ornaments; very slight toning in places, but an excellent copy; bound in later seventeenth-century English red morocco, gilt corner-pieces, spine gilt in compartments with gilt green morocco lettering-piece, edges marbled and partially gilt, marbled endpapers; two small wormholes to front board, very slight rubbing at joints; early red ink ownership stamp ‘G. Wills Esqr’ to title, modern bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst to front pastedown.
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[Rerum romanarum libri IV and Epitome historiae romanae;] Cl. Salmasius addidit Lucium Ampelium [Liber memorialis] e cod. MS. nunquam antehac editum.
The attractive Elzevir edition of Florus’ Roman history, containing the editio princeps of Ampelius’ history, in a handsome English Restoration binding with highly unusual edge decoration.
Florus’ identity is not known for certain, though he is commonly called Lucius Annaeus and identified with the second-century poet-friend of the emperor Hadrian. His Latin Epitome is an abridgement of Roman history up to the age of Augustus and a panegyric of the Roman people. ‘Some manuscripts describe it as an epitome of Livy, but it is sometimes at variance with that historian while it draws on the work of Sallust and Caesar and perhaps Virgil and Lucan. The style is markedly rhetorical’ (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature).
Ampelius’ Liber memorialis is both far scarcer and far broader, containing not only Roman history but also world history and geography; its brief preface professes to provide for a reader ‘wanting to know all things’ (p. 303, trans.).
The present copy is in Willems’s second state, with pages 200 and 336 misnumbered ‘220’ and ‘536’ and the initials ‘S. R. Q. R.’ in the background of the title corrected to ‘S. P. Q. R.’.
STCN 832663247; Willems 467.