ANNOTATED THROUGHOUT
SUETONIUS Tranquillus, Gaius, and HERODIAN OF ANTIOCH.
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia d’Herodiano de lo imperio dopo Marco tradotta in lingua toscana…
Venice, Venturino di Rossinelli [for Curzio Navò], 1539.
8vo, ff. 148 [i.e. 138], [1], [1, blank]; woodcut device to verso of title (bull with initials M S, see below); text printed in italic types, guide letters for initials, running titles; stain to the first leaf of text, some marginal thumbing in places, very light toning, but a very clean copy in contemporary calf, sides with blind frames of multiple fillets, a single gilt fillet panel with gilt knotwork centrepiece and gilt cornerpieces, blind-ruled panelled spine; joint cracked but holding, spine extremities and corners worn and chipped, a further chip to the lower bottom edge, surface abrasions and staining, front endpapers renewed, ties perished; early ownership inscription on title ‘Jo. Raph. Caf[atani], Cap[itani]?, further inscription to rear pastedown, erased, numerous annotations in the margins throughout, seventeenth-century inscription to the front pastedown citing the price of 20 soldi followed by a satirical sonnet (see below).
Added to your basket:
Vita di duodeci imperatori… nuovamente tradotta in volgare. Historia d’Herodiano de lo imperio dopo Marco tradotta in lingua toscana…
Annotated copy of a scarce edition of this early Italian translation of Suetonius and Herodianus, two works of ancient history which explore the lives and deeds of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian, and from Commodus to the Year of the Six Emperors in 238. The translator of this vernacular version has not yet been identified.
This publication attracted the interest of Dennis Rhodes, who identified the very few editions containing the same rare bull device and observed: ‘The Suetonius of 1539 was printed in two separate issues, one bearing the two devices of Curtio di Troiano di Navò, the other containing the device of the much more obscure publisher Marco Salvioni. It becomes clear that between 1539 and 1544 (if not longer) these two booksellers shared the expense of certain editions which they employed Venturino Ruffinelli to print for them’ (Rhodes, 1977).
The annotator is a diligent contemporary student of history. His marginalia succinctly label passages with their content, and the underlinings tend to pick out sententiae, or lines with a moral meaning. The satirical sonnet penned on the front paste-down appears to lament a life of strife and labour, with the inclusion of a frequent refrain in parenthesis or in commas, ‘poina’, one meaning of which is the vernacular rendition of Poine, the Greek personification of punishment.
EDIT 16 CNCE 75682; USTC 763746. See Rhodes, ‘Two Sixteenth-Century Italian Devices’ in The British Library Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, (1977), pp. 135–38. OCLC finds 4 copies of this edition in the US (Folger, Iowa, Harvard, North Carolina), 3 in Canada (all in Toronto: Fisher, Pontifical Institute, University Library), 2 in UK (BL, Cambridge University Library).
