WITH SCOTTISH PROVENANCE
VALERIUS Maximus; Stephanus PIGHIUS and Justus LIPSIUS (editors).
Dictorum factorumque memorabilium libri IX, infinitis mendis ex veterum exemplarium fide repurgati, atque in meliorem ordinem restituti, per Stephanum Pighium Campensem; accedunt in fine eiusdem annotationes, et breves notae Justi Lipsii.
Leiden, Franciscus Raphelengius ‘ex officina Plantiniana’, 1594.
8vo, pp. [16], 400, 96, [13], [3 (blank)]; with woodcut ‘Labore et Constantia’ device to title, woodcut initials, typographic headpiece; paperflaws to N2 (with loss of a few characters) and to upper outer corner of 2B1-4, dampstain to lower corner of final leaves; a good copy in contemporary vellum, sewn on 4 vellum thongs laced in (one partially lacking); somewhat dusty; eighteenth-century copper-engraved armorial bookplate of Alexander Hamilton to upper pastedown (Hamilton quartering Arran, undifferenced, Hamilton crest, motto ‘Through’, name in cartouche at foot, not in Franks).
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Dictorum factorumque memorabilium libri IX, infinitis mendis ex veterum exemplarium fide repurgati, atque in meliorem ordinem restituti, per Stephanum Pighium Campensem; accedunt in fine eiusdem annotationes, et breves notae Justi Lipsii.
Fourth Plantin edition of Valerius Maximus’s compendium of anecdotes, one of the most popular Classical texts and an insightful source on Roman life. Compiled in the early first century, the nine books of Facta et dicta memorabilia (‘Memorable deeds and sayings’) comprise anecdotes and examples for the use of orators, covering religion, omens, social customs, good and evil conduct, good fortune, military stratagems, and much besides. While unoriginal and rhetorical in style, the work proved very popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The present edition is printed with notes by the humanist scholars Stephanus Pighius (1520–1604) and Justus Lipsius (1547–1606).
Provenance: from the library of an as-yet unidentified ‘Alexander Hamilton’, presumably one of the many in the family of the Dukes of Hamilton to bear the name. The bookplate is not that of the Founding Father, who (following the Amerian custom of appropriating arms) used the arms of the Hamiltons of Grange; this plate has, however, at times garnered attention under that false attribution.
Pettegree & Walsby, Netherlandish Books 29996; STCN 840293569; USTC 423353.
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