HOMER.

      Brescia, Baptista Farfengus, for Franciscus Laurinus, 6 Sept. 1497. This is the Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla’s prose translation of the Iliad, the first complete rendering of either the Iliad or the Odyssey to achieve print in the renaissance. It first appeared in 1474 (anticipating the Florence 1488-89 edition of the Greek text by fourteen years). This is the second edition, with a new introduction. Written in a stylish Latin prose, this version was one of George Chapman’s sources for his English translation of 1598–1611. Chapman claimed to have translated from the Greek but even in his own day it was buzzed abroad that he used a Latin version. “Though he refers to it disparagingly, [Chapman] used it more than he chose to admit (cf. Book iv. 308-9). Valla: ‘Illi veteres …hac disciplina, hoc more, hoc animo in bellis usi, multas urbes multaque oppida expugnaverunt’.Chapman imitates Valla’s epanaphora: ‘And with this discipline’, said he, ‘this form, these minds, this trust, Our ancestors have walls and towns laid level with the dust’.” – H.C. Fay, “George Chapman’s Translation of Homer’s Iliad”, The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 6 (Apr., 1951), pp. 121-128.This copy was read from beginning to end by a contemporary reader who has added annotations (mostly subject headings) throughout in a cursive humanist hand.H8775; BMC VII 986; Goff H312 recording only five complete copies in America (Huntington, Yale, Maryland Diocesan Library, Phyllis & John Gordon, and the Lilly Library).