16TH-CENTURY BOOKS
16TH-CENTURY BOOKS
Rare
Variant — “WE”
Binding Detail —
Sunderland
Copy
Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus Siculus. [Operum lib. vi. priores, Latine Poggio interprete.] [Paris]: [pr. by Jean Marchant for] Jean Petit, [ca. 1507]. 4to. a–v8.4x6y4; 123, [6] ff. [bound with] Justinus, Marcus Junianus. Justini historia ex Trogo Pompeio quattor & triginta epithomatis collecta; acc. Lucius Florus et Sextus Rufus. [Paris]: De Marnef, [ca. 1507]. 4to. A8B4C6a–y8.4z6&4; [18], 140 ff.
Diodorus's work is here accompanied by Justinus’s abridged version of Trogus Pompeius’s history. Both books feature striking capitals and title-page devices. The typography of the first book is Jean Marchant’s, done for Jean Petit whose lion-and-leopard device is prominently displayed. The second book’s device shows initials of two of the three de Marnef brothers (E and G) beneath a pelican in her piety. This second book collates exactly like the Jean Petit edition of Justinus, printed sometime after December of 1507, and appears to differ from it solely in its title-page, probably reset only for insertion of the de Marnef device.
While one copy of Diodorus bound with Petit’s Justinus was found at Harvard, no record of the apparently extremely scarce de Marnef variant could be located.
Provenance: Charles Spencer, Third Earl of Sunderland, lot 3934 in the Sunderland Library sale (1882).
• Diodorus: Moreau 1508:64; not in Schweiger. Justinus: not in Moreau, not in Schweiger. On Diodorus, see: Oxford Companion to Classical Literature, 146. 17th-century English calf, panelled, with gilt fleurons and elaborate front and back gilt floral center motifs, each worked with a minute 
WE. (You need a magnifying glass, but this is THERE.) Overall, showing wear with
some leather chipped from spine, covers abraded, and joints starting. Pages mostly clean, with slight staining to inner margins from binding supports. Gilt cover lozenges still bright and the whole safe to be worked with.
Materia Medica — Ancient Knowledge Dioscorides Pedanius, of Anazarbos. Dioscoridis libri octo Graece et Latine. Castigationes in eosdem libros. Parisiis: Apud Petrum Haultinum (colophon: Excudebat Benedictus Prevost), 1549. 8vo (16.7 cm, 6.5"). [20], 392 ff. 
Click the interior images for enlargements. 
The work was edited by Jacques Goupyl, and is laid out with the Latin translation by Jean Ruel in side-by-side columns with the Greek text.
Provenance: Early title-page inscription, “F.M. ex dono Eduardi Davenant.”
• Adams D656; Durling 1135; Index aureliensis 154.341; Pritzel 2295. 18th-century speckled calf (front cover) and sheep (back cover) rebacked with lighter-colored sheep preserving original gilt-stamped leather title-label; boards scuffed and worn. Title-page with inked inscription as above (and in same hand, “Illuminat mentem Lectio.” First two leaves creased; first and last few leaves with light to moderate waterstaining. A very few marginalia in a tiny, neat, early inked hand. (20639)
 TO Part
IV .
. . |