A REPOSITORY OF RARE WORDS
NONIUS MARCELLUS.
De proprietate sermonum. Iam demum innumeris locis restitutus, multis locupletatus, ope vetustissimorum codicum, et industria Hadriani Iunii medici … additus est in calce Fulgentii Placiadae libellus De prisco sermone ab eodem repurgatus.
Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1565.
8vo, pp. [xvi], 592, [40]; woodcut printer’s device to title-page, woodcut initials; occasional light marginal staining, else a very good copy; bound in contemporary calf, panelled in blind with gilt centre- and cornerpieces, spine gilt in compartments; somewhat rubbed, front joint cracking with very small area of loss at head, endcaps chipped; sixteenth-century manuscript note ‘Lexicographi Latini’ to front pastedown, nineteenth-century armorial Macclesfield bookplate, with earlier paper shelflabels to spine, and armorial blindstamp to first two leaves.
Added to your basket:
De proprietate sermonum. Iam demum innumeris locis restitutus, multis locupletatus, ope vetustissimorum codicum, et industria Hadriani Iunii medici … additus est in calce Fulgentii Placiadae libellus De prisco sermone ab eodem repurgatus.
First critical edition of this grammar and dictionary of Latin from the later Roman Empire, a significant witness to earlier texts now lost, from the extensive library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.
Nonius Marcellus was a (probably) fourth-century Roman grammarian from north Africa, whose dictionary contains quotations from many texts that no longer survive, including lines from the lost satirist Lucilius, the dramatist Accius, and Ennius, both annalist and dramatist; Nonius’ sources are listed by Hadrianus Junius at the start of the volume (pp. 1–30). The original title of Nonius’ work is De compendiosa doctrina, written in twenty books (not all survive), though the title of the first chapter, ‘De proprietate sermonum’, became used as the name of the whole in the printed editions. The main manuscript sources are six ninth-century Carolingian manuscripts.
The text was first printed c. 1470 and regularly reprinted thereafter, often accompanied by other short classical grammars; this is the first critical edition, containing numerous variant readings, with the text laid out clearly and helpfully (early editions ran the text on, making it difficult to identify quotations and verses). The editor, Hadrianus Junius, also included the short lexicon of Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, a sixth-century writer also from north Africa, which contains the meanings of obscure words no longer in common use. It is one of two issues produced by Plantin in 1565, with just a change to the setting of the title-page. 1250 copies were printed; although mostly prepared by Junius, who was in Haarlem not Antwerp, Plantin never received his final corrections and therefore compiled the errata himself, with the promise of a corrected edition to appear at a later date. Unsurprisingly, this never happened.
STCV 12927075; USTC 401233 (for both 1565 issues); Voet 1752B.
