The Catholic Key to Homer
[‘ROBERTI, Antonius’, pseud.]; George PERKINS, editor.
Clavis Homerica, reserans significationes, etymologias, derivationes, compositiones, & dialectos omnium fere vocabulorum, quae in viginti quatuor libris Iliadis Homeri continentur, eodem ordine, quo in ipsis libris leguntur … Editio secunda. London, E. Griffin for Godfrey Emerson, 1638.
8vo, pp. [viii], 391, [77, index], [4, blank]; woodcut and typographic headpieces, woodcut initials; closed paper-flaw to lower margin of A4, small stains to pp. 8 and 76–77, else a very good copy; bound in contemporary Dutch vellum over boards, yapp fore-edges; vellum at front fore-edge and pastedowns no longer adhered to boards, rear pastedown torn; (?)eighteenth-century manuscript annotations in several places (adding the verse number for each entry).
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Clavis Homerica, reserans significationes, etymologias, derivationes, compositiones, & dialectos omnium fere vocabulorum, quae in viginti quatuor libris Iliadis Homeri continentur, eodem ordine, quo in ipsis libris leguntur … Editio secunda.
First London edition, ‘with the Catholic particulars omitted’ (Allison & Rogers I, p. 130) from the overtly Jesuit Douai edition in 1636, of Roberti’s explanation of Homeric vocabulary and terminology, prefaced by a Greek grammar.
The book was initially designed as a textbook for Jesuit colleges; here the title wording omits ‘Societatis Jesu’ after ‘In gratiam studiosae Iuventutis’. The text was reprinted regularly in London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with ten editions (with additions and revisions) listed in ESTC, and various Dutch printings. The entries are arranged in book order, with far fewer entries for the later books, as if the compiler’s interest began to wane; this was the first edition to include an index at the end to facilitate the locating of entries. Antonius Roberti is most likely a pseudonym, as suggested by Allison & Rogers, as there seems to be no trace of a Jesuit with this name. George Perkins, who provided the index and an additional preface to the reader, expanded subsequent editions with readings from the Odyssey.
ESTC S115972; STC 21078a; Sommervogel I:1897; cf. Allison & Rogers 938 (1636 edition).