4to. (VIII),72;294,(2 privilegium); 67,(3); 77,(3 blank) p. Overlapping vellum 24 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 840276850; Brunet 6,18777; Ebert 20119; Graesse 6/1,249) (Details: Nice and clean copy. Woodcut printer's device on the title, depicting a man who tries to clime a tree, the motto reads: 'Ardua quae pulchra', a variant of the wellknown Platonic Adagium of Erasmus 'Difficiliora quae pulchra'. (Adagia 1012,II,I,12) Beautiful engraved portrait of Salmasius, executed and engraved by J. Tangena and I. Snijderhoef. Woodcut initials. At the end of p. 294 has been pasted a slip with 15 lines of corrigenda) (Condition: Vellum age-toned. Back soiled) (Note: The French scholar Claude de Saumaise, latinized Claudius Salmasius, 1588-1653, was a prolific author, and he distinguished himself in his editions as a textual critic and erudite commentator. He was easy to get along with, but murderous on paper. In 1623 he was appointed as the successor of Scaliger at the University of Leiden, a city he was going to hate. When his Leiden colleague Daniel Heinsius, 1580-1655, published his 'Sacrae Exercitationes ad Novum Testamentum' in 1639, Salmasius saw an opportunity to take 'revenge on the man he viewed as the leader of the coterie opposing him at Leiden'. (P.R. Sellin, 'Daniel Heinsius and Stuart England', Leiden/Oxford 1968, p. 43) In the preface of his 'De Modo Usurarum' of 1639 Salmasius ridiculed Heinsius' description of the 'koinê' as 'lingua Hellenistica'. A flurry of polemics followed. In this quarrel the printer Maire sided with Salmasius in his attempts to destroy Heinsius' integrity. (Idem, p. 47) The next step in the ongoing quarrel between Daniel Heinsius, once the favourite of Scaliger, and Salmasius, came in 1643, when Salmasius attacked Heinsius anonymously in his 'Funus linguae Hellenisticae'. And with a still fiercer attack in 'De Hellenistica commentarius, controversiam de lingua Hellenistica decidens', published in the same year, 1643, Salmasius mounted a full-scale assault on Heinsius' position on the 'koinê'. In it Salmasius contended that the language of the Greek Scriptures was not a separate dialect, but the ordinary Greek of his time. (Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarhip, N.Y., 1964, volume 2, 284/86) § The letters of Salmasius were collected and edited by the young promising Dutch student theology Anthony Clement (Antonius Clementius), 1533-1657. (NNBW 1,606/07, and his article in encyclopedievanzeeland.nl) The collection, consisting of 125 letters written before 1638, opens with a biographic eulogy and a bibliography of Salmasius of 72 pages. The recipients of the letters are amongst others Johannes Beverovicius, Johannes Dallaeus, Jacobus Golius, J.F. Gronovius, H. Grotius, I.F. Peireskius, P. Puteanus, and I.G. Vossius. At the end of the 125th letter (p. 294) the editor announces a second volume of letters, till 1640. The project was however delayed, he tells, due to the sudden departure to Germany of the publisher Wyngaerden. Nothing came of it, owing to the premature death of the editor. § The editor added after letter 125 two long treatises disguised as letters: Salmasius' 'Epistola de regionibus et ecclesiis suburbicariis', first published in 1619; and 'Claudii Salmasii ad Aegidium Menagium epistola, super Herode infanticida V.C. Tragoedia, et censura Balsacii'. This second letter is of interest concerning Salmasius controversy with Heinsius. It was first published in Paris in 1644, and is a polemic against Daniel Heinsius', biblical tragedy 'Herodes infanticida' (the Massacre of the Innocents), a tragedy that he published in Leiden in 1632. This tragedy was attacked in 1636 by the French polemicist, poet and literary theoretician J.-L. Guez de Balzac; and in 1642 a French minister, Jean de Croï, published a reaction on Balzac's fierce attack in defence of Heinsius. Which reaction lead to a long letter, written by a raging Salmasius, to the French poet and classical scholar Gilles Ménage (Aegidius Menagius), '(...) super Herode infanticida V.C. Tragoedia, et censura Balsacii', in which he came to the rescue of Balzac, and fiercely attacked his enemy Daniel Heinsius) (Collation: *-10*4 (including the portrait); A-2O4 (leaf 2O4 verso blank) ;a-h4, i2, chi1; A-K4 (leaf K4, & K3 verso blank)) (Photographs on request)