Varia Poemata Graeca & Latina. — Antwerp 1593

Varia Poemata Graeca & Latina. Hymni. Idyllia. Funera. Odae. Epigrammata. Anagrammata. — Antverpiae, Ex officina Plantiniana, apud viduam, & Ioannem Moretum. M. D. XCIII. [Antwerp, Plantin/Moretus, 1593].

First edition.

4to (230 x 165 mm). A-S⁴: 141, (2) p. A bit toned. Ex-libris on paste-down. Contemporary limp vellum. – Adams J-59; ustc 406950.

Some quotations from Th. Schmitz, Les odes grecques de Frédéric Jamot (d. ca. 1609)*: 

„Before turning to these odes themselves, it is necessary to give some bibliographical details about this author – I say bibliographical and not biographical because, as we shall see, his life remains almost unknown. Although he seems to have been a skilful philologist and esteemed by his contemporaries, he is practically forgotten today … Yet he seems to me to deserve a more thorough study than I shall try to give here […].

Most of his works are in Latin and Greek […] He stayed in Paris, where he studied at the College de Cocqueret with Strahle, Galland, Turnèbe and Dorat. It is likely that it was the latter who introduced him to the odes of Pindar. In 1578 Jamot joined the album amicorum of Bonaventure Vulcanius when the latter was in Bethune. He was a physician and had two children, Pierre and Charles, as he himself testifies.

Fortunately, we know more about Jamot’s publications than about his life: his name appears for the first time in 1552, in a small book containing the first idyll of Theocritus […] In 1557, Jamot edited the poem of Triphiodorus [followed by] a contribution of three poems to the collection of epitaphs for the death of Jean Strazel […] Two years later, it was again the death of one of his professors that made him take up the pen: De obitu Petri Gallandij – the idyll is a Greek translation of a poem by Ausone [highly esteemed by the editors Jean Crispin and Henri Estienne].

In 1566, Jamot took part in a translation in Greek verse of some psalms […] In 1567 Jamot’s only French work appeared, a translation of a medical treatise by Demetrius Pepagomene, a fifteenth-century Byzantine physician […] Five years after the Varia Poemata, Jamot published a small book containing only three poems: Parodia Pindarica [Douai 1598]. 

In 1611, Jamot published more pieces in honour of Charles l’Ecluse […] Since l’Ecluse died on 4 April 1609, as we read in the funeral oration, this date is the terminus post quem for Jamot’s death. He was probably born between 1520 and 1530 and reached a considerable age. [In Schmitz‘ article a detailed analysis of Jamot’s seven pindarique odes follows. Towards the end Schmitz writes:] In his seven Pindaric odes, Jamot succeeded in finding the tone and style of his model. But he tried to standardize the Epinicies according to the rules of rhetoric, and for him, the „beautiful disorder“ of the Thebain that so struck Boileau was not the most important aspect of Pindar’s odes. Thus it can be said that Frederic Jabot imitated Pindar without, however, ‚pindarising‘.“

The Funera are on Johannes Strasellus, Pierre Galland, Adrian Turnèbe, Franciscus Gryphius and a few more; the odes, anagramms, idyllia are dedicated to George Buchanan, Joachim Du Bellay, Henri Estienne, Johannes Carpentarius, Fédéric Morel, Jean Dorat, Justus Lipsius, Johannes Moretus and some more.

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* Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance, 1991, vol. 53, pp. 281-303