12mo. (XIV including frontispiece),434, (72) p.; 7 small engraved portraits in the text. Later half calf 12.5 cm (Ref: cf. Schweiger 2,302; cf Brunet 2,289) (Details: Back ruled blind and gilt. Marbled endpapers. Frontispiece, depicting Clio with a pen in her hand, she receives advice from Kronos, who holds a scythe, a winged Fama blows her trumpet. Seven small engraved portraits in the text) (Condition: Binding scuffed. Some pencil notes. Lower margin of the title cut short, with loss of part of the impressum) (Note: This is an edition with commentary of the only surviving complete work of the Roman historian Cornelius Nepos, ca. 100-24 B.C., 'De excellentibus ducibus exterrarum gentium', the first surviving ancient collection of biographies. 'De excellentibus etc.' contains the lives of 20 Greek generals, and the Carthaginians Hamilkar and Hannibal. Nepos corresponded with Cicero and was close with Cicero's friend Atticus. The collection served probably as a model for Plutarch's Vitae Parallelae. In his own days and in late antiquity Nepos was considered to be a source of importance. The churchfather Hieronymus, included him as great historian in his 'De viris illustribus' (392 A.D.). The simple style of writing of Nepos has made him a standard choice for schools. The biographies provided the pupils also models of behaviour. Schweiger mentions numerous editions. This edition was compiled by the Dutch schoolmaster Augustinus van Staveren, 1704-1772, who was appointed in 1750 Rector of the Schola Latina at Leyden. He produced during his career two editions of Nepos, a learned 'editio maior', a stout octavo of 765 p. 'cum notis Variorum suisque', which was first published in 1734 (second edition 1773). In 1755 he produced at the request of the publishing firm Luchtmans an 'editio minor', a small but thick duodecimo 'cum notis A. van Staveren'. The first one, of 1734, is a socalled 'Variorum' edition. Such editions' offer usually the 'textus receptus' which is widely accepted, accompanied with the commentary and the annotations of specialists, taken from earlier useful, normative or renewing editions. Editions like these, 'cum notis Variorum', were useful, but never broke new ground. The production of this kind of editions was the specialty of Dutch scholars of the 17th and 18th century. The compilers seldom were great scholars, but often hard working schoolmasters. Van Staveren's 'editio minor' of 1755 was repeated in 1793. The minor edition left out the learned commentaries, but offered a revised text accompanied by critical and historical notes of Van Staveren, which often contain material found by him in Greek sources. (Van der Aa, 17,2 p. 966/67) The frontispiece and the engravings in the text have a long history. The copper plates for them were first used in 1658. They were used again in editions of 1675, 1687, 1704 (?), 1705, 1728, 1734, 1773 and finally here in 1793) (Provenance: in pencil on the verso of the front flyleaf: 'A. Roozendaal, 1944'. We found one 'A. Roozendaal, Amersfoort' in the tabula gratulatoria of the Festschrift 'Studia varia Carolo Guilielmo Vollgraff a discipulis oblata', Amsterdam 1948, p. 194. After we had found this, a small receipt ticket of a restaurant in Amersfoort, dated 20/3/55, fell out of this book; at the back a note on Van Staveren, apparantly made the same Roozendaal, now an elderly person; A. Roozendaal was probably a student of C.W. Vollgraff, professor of Greek and Archaeology of the University at Utrecht. Vollgraff died in 1967, 91 years old) (Collation: *8 (minus *8)(including frontispiece), A-X12 Y1) (Photographs on request)