De situ orbis — Ferrara 1512

De situ orbis opus … Idem in latinitate a Rhemnio grammatico translatum, falso hactenus Prisciano adscriptum … In idem annotamenta graecorum more latina scripta … Coelii Calcagnini annotatio super Anchiale … — [colophon:] Ferrara, Giovanni Mazzochi, Dec. 1512.

Editio princeps
4to (195 x 141 mm). A-E8 F, G6: (52) leaves. Title-page and last page a bit dusty. Modern vellum. Printed in Greek and Latin.

The Greek type was cut by Benedetto Dolcibelli, who with his partners Bartolomeo Pelusio, Gabriele Braccio and Giovanni Bissoli published an Aesop and the Phalaris in Venice in 1498. This partnership came to a sudden end, ”most probably by some action of Aldus Manutius, who intended to protect his copyright in the method of printing Greek invented by him.“ (Proctor, The printing of Greek …, p. 112). Dolcibelli (or Mangius / Manzius) ”went to Milan, where in 1499 he finished [together with Giovanni Bissoli] the printing of the Suidas Lexicon … He later moved to Regio Emilia, and then to Ferrara, where Giovanni Mazzochi teamed with Dolcibelli. (See Layton, The Greek Book … p. 20f.) (It is worth to note, that Dolcibelli was the printer of the rare and important Nicolaus Cusanus Cortemaggiore or Milan 1502). Ioannes Maciochus (Mazzochi) Bondenus printed another three books in Greek: Chrysoloras, Erotemata in 1509, Crastonus, Dictionum Graecorum thesaurus in 1510 and in 1517 an edition of Libanius.

De situ orbis / Οἰκουμένης περιήγησις is a ”description of the habitable world in Greek hexameter verse, written in a terse and elegant style. Nothing certain is known of the date or nationality of the writer, but there is some reason for believing that he was an Alexandrian, who wrote in the time of Hadrian (some put him as late as the end of the 3rd century) …“ (Enc. Brit 1911). The translation, unlike the note on the title-page, is by Priscianus.
The glosses of the famous Calcagnini on leaves F5 to G6 seem to be his marginal annotations from a Greek manuscript or printed sheets of the present edition Calcagnini had in his library. The heading above these notes reads: Annotatiunculae seu Glossemata e libro Coelii excerpta quae in margine legebantur. Calcagnini was given a chair of Greek and Latin at the University of Ferrara in 1507 or 1509.

Adams D-643; Hoffmann 1833 vol. II, 101: rarissima editio. Gennadius Library, First editions of Greek Classics (1476-1516), no. 39.