4to. (XVI, including a portrait of Persius),214,(16 index) p., 2 engraved plates. Vellum 25 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 83225780X; Schweiger 2,711; Brunet 4,521; Dibdin 2,155; Fabricius/Ernesti 2,361/62; Ebert 11246; Graesse 3,520) (Details: 6 thongs laced through the joints. Portrait of Persius, engraved after a relief once owned by Fulvius Ursinus. Title printed in red & black. Engraved printer's device on the title, which shows a resting Athena, in the background a statue of Hercules; the motto is: 'Studio et Vigilantia'. 1 plate depicts a statuette of the god of silence and secrets 'Harpocrates Bullatus et Bulla', the other shows a 'thiasos' of a drunken Bacchus, carried by a bunch of satyrs, and accompanied by some revellers (Iaspis chorum Bacchi et originem satyrici poematis exhibens). (Condition: Vellum a bit age-toned and very slightly scratched and spotted) (Note: The well-born and well-to-do Roman poet Aulus Persius Flaccus, 34-62 A.D., produced during his short life one book (libellus) with 6 satires, together 650 hexameters. 'They are well described as Horatian diatribes transformed by Stoic rhetoric'. (OCD 2nd ed. p. 805) The first is 'on the decay of literary taste in his own time and the neglect of the manly Republican authors, the second on vanity of wealth and luxury, the third on idleness, the fourth on self-knowledge, the fifth on true liberty, the sixth on the proper use of riches'. (H.J. Rose, 'A History of Latin Literature', London, 1967, p. 377) The style is obscure, contorted and crammed with allusions to Horace and Lucilius. He was much read in antiquity and admired as a moralist in the Middle Ages, but now he is found dull, too difficult, cryptic, too far fetched, and too complicated. 'So fühlte sich zumal das 19. Jh. von seinem vielschichtigen Stil abgestossen, während sich erst neuerdings eine gerechtere Würdigung durchsetzen beginnt'. (Neue Pauly 9, 619) A specimen of this new appraisal is the following quote: 'The elements of composition in Persius' satires - words and ideas, images, steps in the argument, registers of speech and literary style, speeches in dramatic dialogue- are abruptly or peculiarly, even bizarrely, combined. One is faced by an unpredictable, surprising series of conceptions; continuous attention is necessary if one is to understand. However, the surprises and incongruities are often observably intelligent, apt and curiously artistic. From a literary point of view, the quality of continual surprise in Persius' style makes the Satires amusing to read'. (J.R. Bond, 'Persius, the Satires', Warminster 1980, p. 5) § The year 1605 saw the start of modern Persian philology, with Isaac Casaubon's edition of the Satires, his 'Prolegomena in Persium', and his commentary. The edition and its extensive commentary were produced by the French protestant scholar Isaac Casaubon, 1559-1614, who is the first critical commentator of Persius. He deemed Persius the best of the Roman satirists. His preface, also adopted in this edition of 1695, is a vigorous defence of Persius' Stoic earnestness and philosophic constancy. A reissue of the first edition appeared in Paris in 1615. Casaubon's commentary on this Stoic satirist, of which Scaliger said that the sauce was better than the meat, was reprinted in Germany as late as 1833, and has been ultimately merged in Conington's edition (of 1872) (Sandys 2,209). The English classical scholar of French origin Meric (Méric) Casaubon, 1599-1671, son of Isaac Casaubon, who took his refuge in England after the asassination of Henry IV by a Catholic fanatic in 1610, published a revised and enlarged third edition of his father's Persius in London in 1647. The Leiden edition of 1695 is a reissue of that edition. It is found usually in one binding with the Juvenal edition of Henninius of 1695, but it was also published separately) (Collation: pi2 (portrait & title), *2, 2*4; A-V4, X3 (minus blank leaf X4, catchword on leaf X3, and pagination correct), Y-2F4) (Photographs on request)