•  Alden & Landis, European Americana, 574/1; Adams M755; Sabin 1558; Medina, Biblioteca hispano-americana, 235; JCB, I, 253; Arents, Additions, 3; Palau 12595; Maggs, Spanish Americana, 471; Rodrigues 186 and 809; Borba de Moraes (2nd ed.), Bibliographia brasiliana, 532. Half vellum over late-17th-century, early-18th-century "Dutch" gold-stamped "wallpaper"; gilt-stamped leather label on spine, with small circular paper label pasted below; paper with abrasions and vellum soiled. A sound volume. All edges speckled. Light agetoning; one pin-type wormhole at base of outside margin through first quarter of the book, and a bit of other minor marginal worm-work in the first 10 pages neatly repaired.

Egyptians

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.

The six plates, of which three are oversized and folding, were engraved by Huet after the author’s drawings; they include an elevation and cross-section of the Great Pyramid (a chart of measurements of that pyramid, among the earliest accurate measurements published, is also present).

•  Contemporary half morocco over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped title; front cover expertly reattached, paper a bit darkened. Front pastedown with rubber-stamp of an old diocesan library (no other institutional markings), front free endpaper, half-title, and title-page with inked, 19th-century ownership inscriptions. Preface page with small paper adhesions in upper margin; laid-in leaf as above. Light foxing (and none worse) throughout. Inner edge of one folding plate slightly ragged. A good, and now quite strong, copy.

French

•  Brunet, II, 402. Recent black moiré cloth, covers framed with blind roll; spine with gilt-stamped leather title, author, and publication labels. Title-page with early inked annotation to volume information. Some mild foxing, with a few leaves more heavily spotted; plates browned. Plate VII with outer edge cropped, with loss of some characters; plate V with short tear from inner margin.

•  Blackmer Collection 942; Atabey Collection 659; Tobler 153; Rohricht 1776; Europa und der Orient 336. This ed. not in Brunet. Publisher's blind-stamped cloth, spines with gilt-stamped title; cloth gently faded with spine extremities chipped, spine titles dimmed, front covers of vols. I and II detached, cloth starting along joints of vol. IV, spines with later paper shelving labels. Front pastedowns each with institutional bookplate. Vols. II and III lacking frontispieces; frontispiece and first few leaves of vol. I separated. Light to moderate foxing throughout; some corners dog-eared. Maps foxed but otherwise clean and crisp. (19642)

•  Contemporary quarter black morocco with paper-covered sides, spines with gilt-stamped title and gilt-stamped compartment decorations; bindings clean and solid with only very minimal edge and corner wear. Front pastedowns and free endpapers each with institutional rubber-stamp (no other markings). ages slightly age-toned; a few leaves unopened. Handsome.

The editio princeps of the Pharsalia was printed in Rome by Sweynheym and Pannartz in 1469; Christopher Marlowe published the first English translation of any part of the Pharsalia, his rendition of the first book, in 1600, with a 1614 effort by Sir Arthur Gorges being the only other such to precede May’s standard-setting 1626 English version of books one through three.

In the present volume, this great epic poem in May’s translation is accompanied by its translator’s English rendition of his own sequel, originally written in Latin verse. This Continuation advances the action through Cleopatra’s seduction of Caesar (May depicts the Egyptian queen with “snowie necke” and “golden tresses”), the death of Cato, and various additional battles before arriving at Caesar’s death. At the time, May’s work was thought highly enough of that Charles I allowed the Continuation’s dedication to bear his name.

•  Pharsalia: STC 16888; Schweiger, II, 567; ESTC S108868. Continuation: STC 17712; ESTC S108892. 20th-century black morocco in imitation of early, severe style, with raised bands from which blind-tooling extends onto covers; spine with gilt-stamped title and date, and turn-ins elaborately tooled in blind. Moderately worn, spine faded not unattractively, and leather rubbed over joints. Front pastedown with bookplate, inked date of 1986; front free endpaper with inked gift inscription dated 1944. T1-2 trimmed differently and possibly surviving from another copy; A3 of the continuation also possibly supplied. Occasional instances of very minor staining; mostly clean. Pleasant on shelf and in hand.

Preceding the text is a folding map of the Nile River Valley and a one-page publisher's advertisement. Introductory matter consists of a preface, a dedication (to “S.A.R. Madame, Duchesse de Berry”), and a notice warning the traveler interested inmummies to beware of fakes. On pp. 321–71: “Rapports faits par les diverses académies et sociétés savantes de France, sur les ouvrages et collections rapportés de l'Égypte et de la Nubie. Par M. Rifaud.”

Paged separately, following the text, are extensive lists ofwords in the local dialects including “Vocabulaire des dialectes vulgaires de la Hautes-Egypt,” “Vocabulaire de la Nigritie de Fachetrou,” and some basic Arabic vocabulary. The final six pages consists of a list of place-names: “Noms et nombre des iles de la seconde cataracte du Nil.” A search of OCLC produces only one copy with these 60 pages on language, located at the University of Pennsylvania.   Eight other copies located via OCLC seem to have been issued without them.

•  Recent marbled paper-covered boards. Small abrasions at top edge of several preface pages; shallow tear in upper margin of pp. 47/48 (second sequence), touching but not costing a couple of letters; sliver of loss to blank area of outer margin of pp. 267/268. Generally clean, with only the odd spot; small ink jotting on front free endpaper. Map in very good condition, free of spots and tears. Four-digit inked numeral at base of recto of f. [3]. Very good and attractively rebound.  (23908)

This is an untrimmed copy in original boards, with 24 pages of advertising for Carey publications bound in at the front of the volume. The preliminary map, engraved by John Bower, has hand-colored border lines; this American edition does not call for the plates found in the English first, but does include in-text depictions of several “Ethiopic inscriptions.”

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 33864; NSTC 2S3118. Publisher’s quarter tan paper over light blue paper–covered sides; front cover detached and back joint cracked, binding spotted, paper cracked and split along spine, spine label now absent and replaced with hand-inked title, spine with later paper shelving label. Front pastedown with institutional bookplate, front free endpaper with inked ownership inscription dated 1829. Half-title with portion of outer margin torn away (not touching text) and laid in. Map lightly foxed, with two short tears along folds. Pages age-toned, with occasional spots of foxing.