PRISCIAN.

Opera.

      Venice, Philippus Pincius 20 June 1492. 1492 Folio, 308 ll. misnumbered, first blank. Roman letter in two sizes, smaller notes surrounding text, some Greek. One word title printed on verso of last for pasting onto blank prelim if so desired - in this copy the leaf has been cut ready at gutter but not pasted. Contemp. autograph or ex libris on prelim and fly, contemp. ms. on rear free endpaper and very occasionally in text. the odd marginal waterstain, spot or paper ageing, generally a most attractive copy in contemp. quarter pigskin over wooden boards, 4 triple line lozenges, triangles and other geometric borders, small blind panels of phoenixes, 'Tudor' roses and other decoration within, all of one and most of another clasp. An uncommon printing of Priscian of which Goff (cit.infr.) records only two copies. It combines the textual version of Benedictus Brognolus with the commmentary of Ioannes de Aingre and is only the second edition to do so. Priscian (fl.c. AD 500) was the last of the great grammarians of the Roman world. Apart from a treatise on weights and measures and a translation of the world geography of Dionysius, all Priscian's writings were on grammar or rhetoric, richly endowed with quotations from classical literature and closely following the Greek exemplar of Apollodorus Dyscolus. His text was one of the most widely admired and circulated of the Middle Ages. Three 8th century English scholars were certainly familiar with it - Aldhelm, Bede and Alcuin - and there must have been hardly a medieval library that did not possess a ms. In the mid C.14 chapter house of St. Maria Novella in Florence, Priscian's portrait was placed beneath the personification of grammar. It is remarkably fitting that the last work of the ninety year old Cassiodorus at Monte Cassino was the complilation of extracts from Priscian, and equally so that the first copy of his Opera, from which all surviving texts derive was made posthumously by his pupil Theodorus not at Rome but at Constantinople. Priscian was one of the very few bridges linking these two intellectual worlds. A handsome unrestored copy in a particularly appropriate South German monastic binding. BMC V 493. Harris 13362. Goff P969. (Catholic University Washington and N.Y. Public). Klebs 806:10. SN2514.