De urbibus (Graece: Peri poleon)
Amsterdam: Jacobus de Jonge, 1678
First Pinedo edition, with the Greek and the Latin translation in parallel columns over Latin and Greek notes, subsequent to the Greek edition of Aldus (Venice, 1502), reprinted by Giunta (Florence, 1521) and with emendations by Xylander (Basel, 1568). Large quarto, 13-7/8 x 8-7/8 in. (35.2 x 22.5 cm) overall, the pages 13-1/8 x 8-5/8 in. (33.5 x 22 cm). Contemporary quarter hide (deerskin?) stained red, over red, blue and yellow combed pattern marbled paper covered boards, spine in four compartments with raised bands, old paper title-piece lettered in black ink in top compartment, all edges uncut. Printed on fine laid paper watermarked DCA with foolscap, with two engraved vignettes and engraved headpieces, opening letters and tailpieces. Collates [20], 800, [83] pages, plus two blanks front and two blanks rear, complete: [2 ll.], 1 l. (title in Greek and Latin with engraved vignette), 1 l. (engraved vignette recto; quotation from Livy verso), 2 ll. (Admonito ad Lectorem, misbound before the dedication), 6 ll. (Pinedo’s Epistola Dedicatoria to Gaspar de Mendoza), pp. [1]-736 (Stephani Byzantii De Urbibus), [737]-752 (Fragmentum), [753]-786 (Breviarum), [787]-800 (Collationes Jacobi Gronovii), 41 ll. (indexes), 1 l. (errata recto), [2 ll.]. Spine abraded and worn through at ends of some bands, lettering piece heavily chipped, board edges and corners worn through, cover paper rubbed; edges soiled; scattered light foxing infrequently throughout text; overall very good, well printed on crisp and bright uncut paper, the text block square and strong.
Stephanus “of Byzantium,” grammarian in the Court Schools of Constantinople under Justinian I circa 535 A.D., authored a geographical dictionary of the Greek names of places in the ancient world, now know to us predominantly from surviving fragmentary manuscripts descended from a nearly contemporary epitome made by one Hermolaeus, perhaps a junior colleague and almost certainly of the sixth century (Diller, op. cit., pp. 333-4). The importance of Stephanus far exceeds his lexicon, as nearly every entry in the epitome cites the authority of some classical writer, and the surviving fragments show that the original presented “considerable quotations from the ancient authors, besides a number of very interesting particulars, topographical, historical, mythological, and others” (Smth, op. cit., p. 905). Thus Stephanus, by accident of time and place, became one of the last guardians of classical Greek culture at the onset of the Dark Ages. He was mostly forgotten until revived by Eustathius and the Etymologi in the 12th century and again rediscovered in 1491 by the savant Janus Lascaris for the library of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The Aldine edition which sprang from this rebirth and continued through Xylander is derived from “an inferior member of the inferior class of MSS” (Diller, p. 337). Subsequently, other scholars built collations of the more nearly authentic manuscript fragments catalogued at the time of Lascaris’s endeavors, particularly the Palantine codices (Bibl. Vaticana, Palantinus graecus 57 and 253). It fell to Thomas de Pinedo, a 17th century Portuguese-Jewish scholar educated by the Jesuits in Spain who fled the Inquisition to Holland, to print the first edition from such a codex (Perugia Bibl. Communale B11), collated by Gronovius of Pisa and deemed an apograph of the earliest Palantine source (Diller, pp. 341-2). Thus the Pinedo edition, with its substantial Greek and Latin apparatus, is the first critical printed edition of Stephanus. The present uncut, wide-margined copy is an outstanding example from the Princes Liechtenstein and the polylinguist and classicist Lawrence Feinberg.
Provenance:
Ex Libris Liechtensteinianis (engraved armorial bookplate of the Princes
Liechtenstein, arms with Chain of Order of Golden Fleece);
Lawrence I. Feinberg (1942-2009)
References:
Diller, Aubrey, “The Tradition of Stephanus Byzantius,” Transactions
and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. lxix
(The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938), pp. 333-348.
Hoffman, S.F.G., Lexicon Bibliographicum, III (Lipsiae [Leipzig]:
I.A.G. Weigel, 1836), p. 627 (cf. pp. 626-8).
Mertens, Frans Hendrik, Bibliotheca Antverpiensis, II (Anvers,
Edm. L.-P. de la Croix, 1846), p. 165, no. 6134 (under “Dictionnaires
Géographiques”).
Smith, Philip, “Stephanus,” in William Smith, ed., Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, III (London: Taylor, Walton,
and Maberly, 1849), pp. 904-6.
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