Casaubon’s Characters
THEOPHRASTUS; CASAUBON, Isaac, editor.
Θεοφραστου ητικοι χαρακτηρες. Theophrasti notationes morum. Isaacus Casaubonus recensuit, in Latinum sermonem vertit, et libro commentario illustravit. Editio tertia recognita ... Lyon, ‘apud viduam Ant. de Harsy’ (colophon: ‘ex typographia Iacobi Mallet, et Petri Marniolles’), 1612.
8vo, pp. [16], 367, [13], [4, blank]; text in Greek and Latin, woodcut device to title, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; creasing to corners at the beginning, a little marginal worming to pp. 189–208, some light marginal dampstaining towards the end, toned; overall a very good copy in contemporary limp vellum; some areas of loss, spine cockled at head, some marks to covers; early ownership inscription to front flyleaf ‘Carolus du Caurroy emit Tholosae 20 assibus’, annotations in his hand to pp. 106 and 109.
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Θεοφραστου ητικοι χαρακτηρες. Theophrasti notationes morum. Isaacus Casaubonus recensuit, in Latinum sermonem vertit, et libro commentario illustravit. Editio tertia recognita ...
Isaac Casaubon’s celebrated edition of Theophrastus’ Characters, published by Anne de Harsy.
The successor to Aristotle as head of the Peripatetic School, Theophrastus (c. 370–285 BC) wrote on a wide range of subjects, notably botany, but is best remembered for his Characters, entertaining descriptions of the nature and qualities of various ‘types’, including the ‘flatterer’, the ‘idle chatter’, the ‘shameless’, the ‘sponger’, the ‘penny-pincher’, the ‘griping’, the ‘squalid’, the ‘fraudulent’, and the ‘cowardly’. The Characters became a paradigm for European literature, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries found translators and imitators in England, France, and Germany. Theophrastus’ Greek text with facing Latin translation is here followed by the remarkable commentary of the great French philologist Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), first published in 1592.
Anne de Harsy (née Thomas, d. 1625) was the daughter of a Lyonnais merchant and a Calvinist. In 1586 she married the bookseller Antoine de Harsy in Geneva, taking over his Lyon business after his death c. 1607. She is recorded as participating in German book fairs between 1611 and 1621, and towards the end of her career worked in conjunction with her son-in-law Pierre Ravaud. Arbour notes that she printed and published more than fifty works, including editions of Apuleius and Heliodorus, as well as Casaubon’s commentary on Athenaeus. The privilege here refers to her as Anne Thomas and grants her the right to print and sell the Theophrastus for a term of ten years. The printers Jacques Mallet and Pierre Marniolles appear to have worked for Anne between 1610 and 1612.
USTC 6901605.