SCHOTT’S NEPOS
WITH SCOTTISH PROVENANCE
NEPOS, Cornelius; Andreas SCHOTT, editor.
Opera quae quidem extant … Nunc denuo doctorum hominum accessionibus locupletata.
Frankfurt, Claude de Marne & the heirs of Johann Aubry, [1608–] 1609.
Folio, pp. [222], [2 (blank)], 23, [5], [24], 372, ‘473’-‘475’, [1], 373-471, [1]; ‘De vita excellentium imperatorum Graecorum ac Romanorum’ has a separate title-page dated 1608 (they are sometimes found separately but its presence is noted in the contents list); woodcut publisher’s device to title-pages and colophon (that of Andreas Wechel, whose business de Marne and Aubry took over in 1581), woodcut headpieces and initials; foxed and browned (as usual), but a good copy; bound in contemporary vellum over boards, yapp fore-edges, vestigial ties to fore-edge, manuscript spine labels; ownership inscription to rear pastedown of Andew Fletcher of Saltoun (see below).
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Opera quae quidem extant … Nunc denuo doctorum hominum accessionibus locupletata.
First edition thus, edited by Andreas Schott (1552–1629), with his extensive commentary alongside that of previous editors including Denys Lambin, from the library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun.
The only surviving work by the first-century BC biographer Cornelius Nepos, the Vitae excellentium imperatorum once formed part of a broader collection, De viris illustribus. The Lives include Themistocles, Dion, Pausanias, Timoleon, and Hannibal; the most interesting character portrayal is that of Alcibiades, while the last two biographies are the most accomplished, describing the elder Cato and Atticus, with whom Nepos was intimate – these survived separately in a manuscript of the letters of his friend Cicero.
After studies at the university of Louvain, Andres Schott travelled in France before settling in Spain and then Italy, where he held professorships in Greek and rhetoric. In 1597 he returned to his native Antwerp, teaching and writing at the city’s Jesuit college. He was a prolific editor and translator of classical and patristic texts, beginning in 1577 with an edition of Cornelius Nepos’s De viris illustribus.
In this later edition of Nepos, the Lives are prefaced by a selection of related texts including ‘Origo gentis Romanae’ and ‘De viris illustribus Urbis Romanae’, first published by Schott in 1579 and ascribed by him to Sextus Aurelius Victor.
Provenance:
The Scottish patriot Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1653?–1716) ‘was also an extremely passionate and knowledgeable book-collector’ (Willems, p. xi). He probably started collecting around 1675 and over a period of forty years assembled a library of some six thousand books, almost certainly the largest private collection in Scotland at the time.
VD17: 3:310907U and 39:121516Z; STC German N73 and N72; USTC 2134640 and 2001850.
