ALDINE SUCCESSOR
ARISTOTLE. [Opera omnia]. Basel, J. Bebel, 1531.
2 vols. in one, folio, ff. 334, 252, both vols. lacking the last leaf, blank except for printer’s device; printed in Greek letter throughout, printer’s palm-tree device on titles, worm-track in extreme upper outer corner of first four leaves of vol. 1, small round wormhole in outer margin of the following 44 leaves, some occasional pale age-browning to the outer edges; but generally in very fresh, clean condition in contemporary blind-stamped pigskin over wooden boards, catches and clasps.
A very handsome copy: the second edition of the complete works of Aristotle in the original Greek: the successor to the Aldine edition of 1495-98. It was edited by Simon Grynaeus, professor of Greek at the University of Basel, and superintended by Erasmus.In his introduction (7pp.) addressed to John More, only son of Thomas More, Erasmus pays tribute to Aldus “qui primus omnium sua industria typis Graece euulgarit autorem quo vix alius lectu dignior”; but he explains that the five volumes are now so expensive as to deter the young scholar. They can only be found in Italy, if at all, and most if not all sets have been broken up for sale separately. From a letter of Boniface Amerbach cited by P.S. Allen (Erasmus, Epist. 2432, note) we know that Amerbach had to pay 12 crowns for a set of the Aldine Aristotle, whereas the present edition cost 2 crowns. It was reprinted in 1539 and 1550.
With a few exceptions, Grynaeus follows the order of Aristotle’s works presented in the Aldine edition of 1495-8. He adds, in the second volume, the Rhetoric (f. 121r ff.) and the Poetics (f. 158v ff.), which had been omitted in the Aldine edition.
Printed on the title-page is Erasmus’ dialogue between a scholar and a bookseller, a poem in Greek iambics. This is its first appearance in print. See The poems of Desiderius Erasmus, ed. C. Reedijk (Leiden 1956), pp. 349-50.
As compared to the Aldine Aristotle this is a rare book: there is, for instance, but one copy in the libraries of Cambridge (Caius College) and it is over 20 years since a copy appeared at auction in England or America.
A contemporary reader in an elegant humanist hand has added marginal notes (mostly Latin) in a reddish-pink ink to the Categoriae, the De animalibus, and the Physica.
£12500
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