Titi Petronii Arbitri, Equitis Romani, Satyricon

cum fragmentis. Albæ Græcæ recuperatis anno 1688

1691350 pageslatOL58595017M

About this edition

8vo. ff. [2] (blank), pp. [32], 299 (i.e. 297), [1] (blank) (p. 179 called 181 (loss of 2 nos.); pp. 214-216 called 114-116). Calf. Tooled filet on boards, gilded spine, red edges. Tears on *3 [i.e.a5] and D3, the first one mended with clear tape. Printer's device on title page. Includes headpieces, engraved initials. The rare first edition to incorporate the connective fragments said to have been found at Belgrade in 1688, but in fact forged – that is, probably composed or appropriated from a rhetorical exercise of an amateur classicist (see W. Stolz, Petrons Satyricon und François Nodot: ein Beitrag zur Geschichte literarischer Fälschungen. Mainz, 1987; Bib# 4102895/Fr# 374 in this collection) – by the military novelist François Nodot. Nodot published the work as a manuscript ‘discovery’ made by him in war-torn Dalmatia, together with his letter to François Charpentier, president of the Académie Française, announcing the discovery (11 October 1690), and Charpentier’s reply (9 November), welcoming it. This copy has uncorrected preliminaries and a false imprint, and the edition is so scarce as to have eluded, save by report, the distinguished bibliographer of Petronius, Stephen Gaselee (see S. Gaselee, ‘Bibliography of Petronius’ in: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 10 (1909), pp. 141-233, number 56); F.L.A. Schweiger, Handbuch der classischen Bibliographie. Leipzig, 1834, vol. 2, chapter II, pp. 723-724 (‘erste und höchst seltne Ausgabe’); G.L. Schmeling & J.H. Stuckey, A Bibliography of Petronius. Leiden, 1977, no. 85; Stolz 1. See Bib# 4102890/Fr# 368 in this collection for a variant copy of this first printing. The present variant is preserving an evidently uncorrected state of the preliminaries (the first leaf in gathering a8 is signed ‘aij’, and a5 is signed ‘***3’). Oddly enough the text of the four pages involved is identical, with no other evidence of resetting save the signature marks, which must have been changed during the press run. No other copies of this state are recorded. <a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/permalink/01JHU_INST/1lu78g9/alma991039112669707861" rel="nofollow">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.</a>

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