Solinus Gaius Julius

SITU ORBIS TERRARUM ET MEMORABILIBUS QUAE MUNDI AMBITU CONTINENTUR LIBER

      Venetiis: Nicolaus Jenson, 1473. Very Rare First Edition., the Editio Princeps. Printed with the Roman type designed by Jenson. The typography used for this important book is so beautiful and so basically correct that it has served as a model for all those typographical artists who have thoguht to carry on this tradition. Folio (278 x 180 mm), handsomely bound in 18th century green morocco, the covers with triple gilt fillet lines at the borders, the spine with raised bands, the compartments decorated with elaborately gilt panes with central ornamental tools, two morocco lettering labels gilt, gilt edges, marbled endleaves. 68 leaves (136 pp.) In a pleasing binding and a highly important rare survival, the binding remains in very sound and attractive state, lower outside corner of the first leaf skillfully repaired, interesting manuscript notations and emendations throughout, this copy washed in the 18th century when it was bound.. VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF THIS IMPORTANT WORK. SolinusOs work, also called OCollectanea Rerum MemorabiliumO is a compendium of curiosities and wonders of the ancient world, with remarks on geographical, historical, social, religious and natural history questioins. The greatest part of this instances is taken from PlinyOs Onatural HistoryO and Pomponius Mela. Solinus is the only ancient writer who mentions the English Isle of Thanet. This text exerted a great influence during the Midle Ages, most notably upon Isidore of Seville and Brunetto Latini. Julius Solinus (fl. 250 AD), surnamed Polyhistor, or "Teller of Varied TalesO, Latin grammarian and compiler, proably flourished during the first half of the 3rd century A.D. He provided the standard source of geographic myth during all the years of the OGreat InterruptionO, from the fourth till the fourteenth centuries. It is doubtful if anyone else over so long a period has ever influenced geography "so profoundly or so mischievously." Solinus' work had wide appeal. Saint Augustine himself drew on Solinus', as did all the other leading Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages.E The stories and fabulous images that Solinus retailed enlivened Christian maps right down to the Age of Discovery. They became an all- encompassing network of fantasy, replacing the forgotten rational gridwork of latitude and longitude, which had been Ptolemy's legacy. Solinus found wonders near and far. From Italy he reported people who sacrificed to Apollo by dancing barefoot on burning coals, pythons that grew long and fat by feeding on the udders of milk cows, and lynxes whose urine congealed to "the hardness of precious stone, having magnetic powers and the color of amber." Grasshoppers and crickets in Rhegium still dared make no sound because Hercules, irritated by their noise, had once ordered them to keep silent. Further afield were the dog-headed Simeans of Ethiopia, ruled by a dog-king. Along the Ethiopian coast were peoples with four eyes, while along the Niger were ants as big as mastiffs. In Germany there was a mule-like creature with such a long upper lip that "he cannot feed except walking backward." Human monstrosities that were normal in remote parts of the world included tribes who had their eight-toed feet turned backwards, men with dogs' heads and talons for fingers who "barked for speech," people who had only one leg, but with a foot so large that it protected them from the hot sun by serving as a parasol. History of Science As to Jenson--O...(A)mong the early Venietian printers the most important was certainly Nicholas Jenson. A Frenchman by birth, he passed his apprenticeship in the Paris Mint, and became afterwards the head of the Mint at Tours. In 1458, in consequence of the stories of the invention of printing, he was sent by Charles VII to Mainz to learn the art, and introduce it into France. Jenson returned in 1461, when Louis XI had just been crowned; but he does not seem to have settled in France, and we first hear of him again in 1470 as a printer at Venice. From 1470 to 1480 he printed continuously, issuing, according to Sardini, at least one hundred and fifty five editions, though this number must be considerably under the mark. His will was drawn up on the 7th September 1480, and he died in the same month....In 1474 he began to use Gothic type (after a crisis in the printing and book trades during which Jenson developed the new type and began to use it in a significant way in his printing of a number of the most important law-texts)...and in 1471, in the EPISTOLAE FAMILIARES, he used Greek type in the quotations, the first instance of its employment in Venice.O Duff, Early Printed Books ...The COLOGNE CHRONICLE in 1499 made reference to Jenson in the following passage: -- OOne named Omnibonus wrote in a preface to the book called QUINCTILIANUS, and in some other books too, that a Walloon from France, named Nicol. Jenson, discovered first of all this masterly art (printing)...O While it is now agreed that the art was first discovered in Mainz by Gutenberg, JensonOs importance to the discovery and scientific advancement of printing cannot be overstated. He is one of the most important players in the development of the extraordinary art of printing which allowed the Rennaissance to flower. O His type has great clarity and liveliness, and at the same time an element of divine repose. The Jenson types are part of the same Renaissance glory that gave the world the supremely beautiful written letters of the humanistic scribes.O (Blumenthal) His cutting of types in Venice made the city a centre of the art for the centuries that followed.