Boards decorated with 3 rows of blind-stamped rolls, the first one with floral motives, the second and third comprising portraits of apostles and other biblical figures, and floral motives; the portraits are accompanied by short texts which are reasonably legible, e.g. King David, playing his harp, he has the text: 'De fructu ventris tui'; this refers to Psalm 131,11, where God promisses David: 'iuravit Dominus David veritatem et non frustrabit eum de fructu ventris tui ponam super sedem suam'. Left and right of David's head the initials H and R. Another blind-stamped portrait depicts the apostle Paul, whose text is: 'Apparuit beningita(s)' (sic!), a quote from a letter of Paul to Titus. (Ep. Pauli ad Titum 3,4) The initials H.R. stand for 'Hans Rietzsch', a Würzburg bookbinder, of whom the University library of Würzburg holds a great number of bindings, which can be dated between 1555 and 1570. Rietzsch often used on 'his' boards rolls depicting King David, John the Baptist, the apostle Paul. (H. Endres, 'Die Zwickauer Buchbinder Hans Rietzsch und Gregor Schenck und ihre Beziehungen zu Würzburg', Archiv für Buchbinderei 26 (1926) p. 13-16)

Extensive commentary by the author on his fundamental work on Roman history, Sigonio s treatise on Roman names is included at the end. An Italian humanist and historian, Carlo Sigonio (1524-1584) was elected professor of Greek in Modena, his native city, in 1546. Later, he worked as a professor of humanities in Venice, Padua and Bologna. A scholar of Livy and Dionysus of Halicarnassus, Sigonio was already interested in the problem of Roman chronology when, in 1546, a mass of fragments of the monumental Fasti of Augustus was discovered in the Forum Romanorum in Rome. This new epigraphical document of great importance is at the basis of his Fasti Consulares , a revised list of Roman kings, republican consuls, consular tribunes, censors, dictators and magistri equitum, with the triumphs they had celebrated, from the regal period to Tiberius. Sigonio s Fasti represents a crucial development to the previous chronologies based only on literary sources, and his insistence on critical methods for reconstructing the past revolutionized the study of ancient Roman history (McCuaig). A complete commentary on the Fasti was published in this 1556 edition for the first time, and it is essentially a manual of Roman history. De nominibus Romanorum liber is a short but noteworthy treatise on Roman names. It begins with a presentation of the roman system of three names (praenomen, nomen, cognomen); then, it provides a list of all Roman personal and family names with an explanation of their geographical origin and etymological meaning. The etymology of the name Cesar is one of the most fascinating: Sigonio, quoting the grammarian Servius, notes that in the Punic language Caesar means elephant, and that this name was originally attributed to a man who killed an elephant during the Punic wars. This interpretation is accompanied by two woodcuts depicting a Roman coin with an elephant and the inscription CAESAR on one side, and weapons on the other side. USTC 856325; BM STC It. p. 626; Adams S1115; Renouard 169:16. McCuaig, William, Carlo Sigonio: The Changing World of the Late Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 2014)