‘The Most Important Commentary on Virgil’
POMPONIO LETO, Giulio.
In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti, nuncque primum in lucem editi. Basel, [Johann Oporinus, 1544].
8vo, pp. [xvi (last 2 blank)], 615, [57]; woodcut initials; first few leaves frayed at corners and with small wormhole affecting a few letters but not legibility, title strengthened in gutter, small tear to fore-edge of last leaf, but a good, wide-margined copy; bound in later stiffened paper wrappers (covering earlier blue paper wrappers?), upper cover and front hinge strengthened with an additional pastedown (reusing a nineteenth-century manuscript leaf), manuscript paper spine label; a few small wormholes; inscription to title-page ‘Ant. ...'.
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In omnia quae quidem extant, P. Vergilii Maronis Opera, Commentarii, varia multarum rerum cognitione referti, nuncque primum in lucem editi.
Second edition of Leto’s influential commentary on all the works of Virgil, ‘the first to deal with all the works attributed to Virgil, and also the most extensive and complete, and therefore certainly the most important commentary written in the fifteenth century’ (Stok, p. 204).
Giulio Pomponio Leto (1428–1498) studied in Rome with Theodorus Gaza and Lorenzo Valla, becoming professor at the University of Rome before moving to Venice as a private tutor (resulting in accusations of sodomy). He had access to the fifth-century Codex Mediceus of the works of Virgil as well as the commentary of Probus on the Eclogues and Georgics and a tenth-century manuscript of a commentary on the Georgics.
‘Using the ancient sources he had discovered, besides several other ancient works, Laetus was proposing a largely new commentary, different from the traditional one written by Servius (which he frequently criticized), and obviously very different from the commentaries written from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries’ (ibid., p.204).
The commentary (or rather, Leto’s compilation from other commentaries together with his own notes) was for use in his teaching in Rome, but for some reason he chose not to have it published. However it was printed without his permission in 1487 by Bonino de’ Boninis in Brescia, much to Leto’s annoyance, and this was the text used by Oporinus for this 1544 edition, including the previous dedicatory letter from Daniele Gaetano, editor of the Brescia edition. Oporinus used the incorrect name Pomponius Sabinus, which was repeated in subsequent editions.
OCLC and USTC together find five copies in the US (Columbia, Hamilton, Kansas Stanford, UCSD), and two in the UK (All Souls Oxford, BL).
USTC 668506; VD16 P 4150; seemingly not in BM STC German. See Stok, ‘The manuscript and print tradition of Pomponius Laetus’s commentary on the Aeneid’, in Habent sua fata libelli: studies in book history, the classical tradition, and humanism in honor of Craig Kallendorf (2022), pp. 203–217.