Read by Gibbon for Decline and Fall
ZOSIMUS.
Ιστοριας νεας βιβλοι ἑξ … Historiae novae libri sex, notis illustrati. Oxford, Sheldonian Theatre, 1679.
8vo, pp. [viii], 384; copper-engraved Sheldonian device to title, printed in Greek and Latin in parallel columns; a very good copy in contemporary panelled calf, later spine label.
Added to your basket:
Ιστοριας νεας βιβλοι ἑξ … Historiae novae libri sex, notis illustrati.
First Oxford edition of this history of the Roman Empire from Augustus to the year 410, by the fifth-century Greek historian Zosimus. The work is an important source particularly for the period 395-410 and its pagan author attributes Rome’s decline to its embrace of Christianity and rejection of the pagan gods. This was the edition read by Gibbon for Decline and Fall.
This edition is the work of the Oxford clergyman and classical scholar Thomas Spark (1655–1692), and includes a dedication jointly to the Dean of Westminster, John Dolben, and to his former schoolmaster Richard Busby. He also produced editions of Herodian and Lactantius, soon after disparaged by Thomas Hearne as “a poor Performance, the Text being very uncorrect and the Notes from MSS. very mean, he having taken no pains to collate them accurately” (ODNB).
ESTC R22314; Wing Z15; Madan III, 3242.