LIVY, Titus. 

T. Livii Patauini […] ex XIIII Decadibus Historiae Romanae ab Urbe condita, Decades, prima, tertia, quarta,...

Paris, [Michel Vascosan for] Oudin Petit, 1543 [– Michel Vascosan for himself and Oudin Petit, 1542]. 

A much-praised edition of Livy’s History, reprinting Vascosan’s 1535 edition and including the philological corpus on Livy by the most established humanists of the time: Rhenanus, Gelenius, Grynaeus, Glareanus, Badius Ascensius, Valla, and Sabellico. 

£3800

MABLY, Gabriel Bonnot, Abbé de.

Observations on the Romans. Written originally in French …

London: Printed for R. Griffiths … 1751.

First English edition of this Roman history (first published in the same year in Geneva as Observations sur les Romains). Mably studies episodes from the pre-imperial era (the seven kings, Gracchi and Punic wars), before skimming the vast majority of imperial dynastic rule to finish with a chapter...

£875

MARLIANI, Bartolomeo. 

Urbis Romae topographia. 

Rome, Valerio & Luigi Dorico, September 1544. 

First illustrated edition (third overall), showing the archaeology and antiquities of Rome as known in the sixteenth century.  First published in octavo by Antonio Blado in 1534 and reprinted at Lyons by Sébastien Gryphe later the same year, Marliani’s topography of Rome remained the foremost...

£5500

MELCHIOR, Christian. 

‘Synechia sive summa lectionum Plutarchicarum a domino conrectore huius scholae Salderianae praelectarum. ...

[Brandenburg an der Havel, 1620.] 

An unpublished early seventeenth-century manuscript recording lectures on Plutarch’s pedagogical work On the Education of Children, bound with a scarce printed edition of the same text, and a rare edition of the poems of Theognis and other Greek lyric poets, each with numerous marginal and...

£6500

MERCURIALE, Girolamo. 

De arte gymnastica libri sex, in quibus exercitationum omnium vetustarum genera, loca, modi, facultates,...

Venice, [Lucantonio II] Giunta, 1587. 

Third edition of ‘the first illustrated book on gymnastics’ (Morton).  A physician occupying senior posts in the medical faculties of Padua, Bologna, Rome, and Pisa, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) draws heavily on accounts of ancient exercise to argue for its medical benefits, being the...

£2750

MILBANK, Augustus Sussex.

A Treatise upon the political & social Condition of Europe, from the Fall of the Roman Empire, down to...

[Richmond, M. Bell for] London, Messrs Hatchard & Son, and Richmond, M. Bell, 1847.

First and only edition of a rare Yorkshire-printed treatise of social history by an amateur historian and educational enthusiast, inscribed by the author to the Countess of Sandwich.

£125

MIRANDULA (or MIRANDOLA), Ottaviano. 

Illustrium poetarum flores. 

Antwerp, Joannes Bellerus, 1563. 

A remarkable copy, with numerous and eloquent contemporary annotations and additions in a French hand, of a scarce edition of an extremely popular collection of quotes and passages from classics of poetry, published by the renowned Flemish printer and composer Joannes Bellerus (Jean Bellère,...

£1950

NEPOS, Cornelius; Andreas SCHOTT, editor.

Opera quae quidem extant … Nunc denuo doctorum hominum accessionibus locupletata.

Frankfurt, Claude de Marne & the heirs of Johann Aubry, [1608–] 1609.

First edition thus, edited by Andreas Schott (1552–1629), with his extensive commentary alongside that of previous editors including Denys Lambin, from the library of Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun.

£850

NICOLAUS of Damascus, and Niels KRAG (editor). 

Ex Nicolai Damasceni universali historia seu de moribus gentium...

[Geneva or Heidelberg,] Pierre de Saint-André, 1593. 

First edition of Krag’s translation of Nicolaus of Damascus’s observations on the customs of the peoples of the ancient world.  The observations on forty ancient peoples (among them the Iberians, Celts, Phrygians, Assyrians, and Ethiopians) are extracted from the Universal History...

£300

ORIBASIUS. 

Commentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis … Ioannis Guinterij Andernaciis medici industria velut e profundissimis tenebris...

Paris, Simon de Colines, 1533. 

First edition of this commentary on Hippocrates, bound with a richly annotated copy of Galen’s works in the translation by Thomas Linacre. 

£1750

[ORPHIC POEMS.]

Ορφεως αργοναυτικα υμνοι και περι λιθων. Orphei Argonautica hymni et de lapidibus...

Utrecht, Willem van de Water, 1689.

First Eschenbach edition, presenting the ‘Argonautica Orphica’, an anonymous fourth-century Greek epic probably based on the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, which had been rediscovered in the fifteenth century by Constantine Lascaris, alongside the Orphic Hymns and the Lithica,...

£325

OVID.

In hoc volumine h[a]ec co[n]tinentur. P. Ovidii Nasonis vita. Heroidum epistol[a]e. Amorum libri III. De arte amandi lib....

[(Colophon:) Venice, Bernardino Stagnino, 19 October 1530.]

Very rare pocket-sized edition of selected works by Ovid published at Venice by Bernardino Stagnino (1483–1538).

£1250

OVID.

P. Ovidii Nasonis operum …

Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1629.

First Elzevir edition, newly edited by Daniel Heinsius based on the Plantin edition of 1578.

£500

OVIDIUS Naso, Publius, and Pedro Sánchez de VIANA, translator and commentator. 

Las transformaciones. 

Valladolid, Diego Fernández de Córdoba, 1589.

First edition, a copy of notable provenance, of perhaps the most successful early Spanish translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, by Pedro Sánchez de Viana (c. 1545–1619), a physician by training, published along with his substantial commentary. 

£6000