DIODORUS SICULUS.

BIBLIOTHECAE SEU RERUM ANTIQUARUM TUM FABULOSARUM TUM VERARUM HISTORIAE, PRIORES LIBRI SEX. TRANS. BY GIANFRANCESCO POGGIO BRACCIOLINI. 1531 PARIS, SIMON DE COLINES

      With printer's woodcut device on title and verso of last printed leaf, foliated woodcut initials, capital spaces with small guide letters, white-on-crible' ground. Printed in Italics. 16 unn., 214 num. leaves. 8vo. 19th-century morocco, gilt lettering on spine, gilt inner dentelles, e.g. From the collection of Hendrik D. L. Vervliet. Paris, Simon de Colines, 1531. Only Colines edition of the surviving books of Diodorus' Library of History. The Greek "editio princeps" was first published in 1559 by Henri Estienne. Composed in the first century BC, the entire work consisted of forty books (only books 1-5 and 11-20 still extant), which traced "world history" (i.e. Greco-Roman) from the era of mythological pre-history to the beginning of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars. The present edition contains the first five books as well as a portion of the sixth, focusing on the pre-Trojan war mythical era. The Greek historian was born in Agyron, Sicily. His main merit is to have assembled quotations from historical sources otherwise lost. Historical facts and mythology are treated as equal. This Latin translation is by the Italian humanist and historian Giovanni Francesco Poggio Bracchiolini (1380-1459), who dedicated it to Pope Nicolas V (1397-1455), founder of the Vatican Library. - Fine copy, printed in Italics throughout. - STC (French) 135; Adams D-467; Index aurel. 153.740; Renouard (Colines) 177. HUMANISM ;