Orationes — Florence 1517

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Λόγοι. Orationes. [Graece]. — [Colophon:] Impressum bonis avibus optatam contigit metam hoc Aristidis opus die xx. Maii. M.D.XVII. FLorentiae sumptibus nobilis viri Philipi iuntae bibliopolae Leonis X. pontificis nostri anno quinto. 

[Florenz, B. Zanetti for Ph. Giunta, 20 May 1517].

Editio princeps.

Folio. a–z8: 183, (1) leaves. Contemporary blindstamped half calf over boards pasted with green vellum. Rebacked. Small stamp to title-page, which is reinforced at inner gutter. A few tiny wormholes in inner gutter of lower blank margin, and lower corner of the title-page with a brown spot. Fresh and wide-margined copy.

Provenance: Contemporary entry on title: εἰμὶ ἐκ τῶν τοῦ Γεράρδου Ῥουτήρος (Gerhard Rheuter).

Hoffmann (1838) I, 246f. (»selten, u. theuer«); Adams A-1702; Dibdin I, 293. 

Device: Kristeller, Ital. Bücherzeichen 46. Davies, Devices of the early printers, 1457–1560, no. 66 („one of the most beautiful devices: it would be hard to find its equal for perfect balance and proportion“). 

¶ Aristeides or Aristides, Greek rhetorician and sophist, ca. 117–189. »the extant work of A. consist of two small rhetorical treatises and fifty-five declamations, some not really speeches at all. The treatises are on political and simple speech, in which he takes Demosthenes and Xenophon as models …« (Enc. Brit.) This first edition contains 52 speeches, among them the defense of rhetorics against Plato’s Gorgias, the famous Παναθηναικός and at the end the six ἱεροὶ λόγοι, which »give all full account of his protracted illness, including a mass of superstitious details of visions, dreams and wonderful cures, which the God Asclepius ordered him to record.« 

Editor of the edition was the Florentine physician Euphrosynus Boninus, his letter to Bernardus Michelotius on verso of first leaf. Dedication of the Roman humanist Angelus Colotius/Angelo Colocci to Leo X. on recto of second leaf.

The Greek font, cut by Kallierges in 1508, went to Bartolomeo Zanetti, who printed for Giunta since 1514; Giunta used it up to 1542.