SOPHOCLES.
Aiax flagellifer. Callimachi Cyrenaei Hymni in Iovem & Apollinem. Ioanne Lonicero interprete. Genetliacon divo Vilhelmo iuniori Cattorum principi sacrum, Ioanne Lonicero autore.
Basel, [Johann] Herwagen, August 1533.
4to, pp. 129, [3]; printed in Latin and Greek on facing pages, woodcut devices to title and final page, woodcut initials; a3 and a5 folded at fore-edge to preserve annotations, title lightly dampstained, but a very good copy; in late nineteenth-century marbled sheep, spine blind-ruled in compartments with gilt centre-pieces, gilt green morocco lettering-piece, marbled endpapers; extremities rubbed; ink ownership inscription ‘Iacobüs Frobenius Vüittebergae Anno dni 1543’ to title, annotations and underlining to text in a minute contemporary German hand (to approx. 40 pp.), nineteenth-century printed booklabel of Charles-Jules-Adrien de Marne Comte de Vautron-Bois to upper pastedown.
Added to your basket:
Aiax flagellifer. Callimachi Cyrenaei Hymni in Iovem & Apollinem. Ioanne Lonicero interprete. Genetliacon divo Vilhelmo iuniori Cattorum principi sacrum, Ioanne Lonicero autore.
First separate edition of Sophocles’s Ajax, with a facing Latin version by humanist philologist and theologian Johann Lonitzer (c. 1499–1569), printed with his translation of Callimachus’s hymns to Apollo and Zeus and his ode celebrating the birth of the future Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel (1532–1592).
The volume was inscribed in 1543 by a Jakob Froben, presumably the ‘Jakob Froben aus Ilmenau’ recommended by Martin Luther for a stipend at Wittenberg two years previously, and most likely also the priest of the same name found at nearby Schmölln in 1557. It is tempting to think he may be a relative of the printers Johann (1460–1527) and Hieronymus Froben (1501–1563). The annotations are in a different but contemporary minute German hand; they include notes in both Greek and Latin, with translations between the two languages, grammatical observations, and typographical corrections.
Adams S-1454; VD16 ZV-14509. For records of Jacob Froben, see Zeitschrift des Vereins für Thüringische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 21 (1903), p. 199, and Ludwig, Das landesherliche Stipendienwesen an der Universität Wittenberg unter den ernestinischen Kurfürsten von Sachsen (2019), p. 94 n. 304.
