HERODOTUS (c.490 - c.425 B.C.). Historiae, in Greek. Edited by Aldus Manutius (c.1452-1515). Venice: Aldus Manutius, September 1502.
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HERODOTUS (c.490 - c.425 B.C.). Historiae, in Greek. Edited by Aldus Manutius (c.1452-1515). Venice: Aldus Manutius, September 1502.

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HERODOTUS (c.490 - c.425 B.C.). Historiae, in Greek. Edited by Aldus Manutius (c.1452-1515). Venice: Aldus Manutius, September 1502.

2° (318 x 204mm). Text in Greek and Latin, Aldine device on title and final leaf. (Title and last leaf lightly soiled, tiny marginal wormhole in final 40 leaves.) 19th-century blindstamped pigskin with Aldine device on sides, modern labels on spine, red speckled edges (lightly soiled). Provenance: early Greek annotations — Girolamo D'Adda (1815-1881; armorial bookplate) — Livio Ambrogio (bookplate).

EDITIO PRINCEPS of Herodotus' history of the Persian Wars, one of the most important texts edited by the great scholar-printer-publisher himself. Aldus claims in the dedication that he corrected the text from multiple exemplars, one of the few instances where such a claim by him is justified and can be verified. He was the first to have access to the 'Florentine' codices, where Valla had used the so-called Roman family of manuscripts for his translation. The printer's copy was discovered in Nuremberg by Brigitte Mondrain in 1993 (Scriptorium 49 [1995], pp. 263-273). The Herodotus was designed to match the Aldine Thucydides of four months earlier: they share a paper stock, all types and the number of lines per page. Ahmanson-Murphy 50; Isaac 12782; Laurenziana 64; Renouard, Alde 35:8; Sansoviniana 67.
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