8vo. (XVI),298,(14) p., frontispiece & 26 engraved plates. Calf. 16 cm "Prize copy' (Ref: STCN ppn 20819178X; Brunet 4,793; Michaud 34 p. 12: 'la meilleure édition est celle qu'a publiée Sam. Pitiscus') (Details: Prize copy, probably of a Belgian Jesuit College. Back with 5 raised bands between gilt fillets & floral rolls. Black morocco gilt lettered shield in the second compartment. Boards with gilt fillet borders. Within the fillet border a gilt row consisting of ears of corn and quadrangles. A gilt lyre in all 4 corners. A gilt oval laurel wreath with in its center the gilt text PRAEMIUM. Edges of the boards gilt. Marbled endpapers. Title in red & black. Woodcut printer's mark on the title. Engraved frontispiece depicting deities. 26 engraved plates with mythological scenes) (Condition: Wear to extremes, back somewhat rubbed. Prize gone. Front hinge cracking, but still hanging on 2 ties) (Note: This is the 6th edition of the most popular and authoritative mythology manual of the 17th and 18th century. It was first published in Lyon in 1659. There are more than 40 editions, and it was translated into English, French, Spanish and Polish. The manual was produced by the French Jesuit schoolmaster François Antoine Pomey, 1618-1673, who lectured humanities and rhetoric at several colleges. He is also the author of a number of schoolbooks and dictionaries. His 'Pantheum Mythicum' became to be regarded as an essential work which provided the indispensable ornaments of formal discussion. It was also popular as a schoolbook, for the stories formed a body of moral precepts, hidden under the mask of agreable fiction. 'Perinde quasi, alius esse debeat, cum omnibus, tum mihi maxime, ac studium & propagatio Divinae gloriae?'; In the praefatio to this 6th edition the Dutch classicist of German origin, Samuel Pitiscus (Samuel Petiski), 1636-1727, tells the reader that the publisher had sold within 4 years 1300 copies of the 5th edition of 1697. To surpass this tremendous success he asked him to produce a new edition purged from all erroneous inventions and extensions of later editors, and mistakes of ignorant printers. Pitiscus really was the expert for the job. He produced editions of several Roman historians, and did also lexicographic work. He was well acquainted with the 'Romanae Antiquitates' of Rosinus and Dempster, and in 1713 he published an encyclopaedic 'Lexicon Antiquitatum Romanarum') (Collation: *8, A-T8 V4 (Photographs on request)