ANNOTATED ANCIENT GREEK

Pindar [Portus, Aemilius, ed.]: Pindari Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia. Graece & Latine. Latinam interpretationem M. Aemylius P. Fr. Porti C.F. Linguae Graecae Professor novissime recognovit, accurate repurgavit, & passim illustravit. [[Greek letters] Lurikoi. Carminum poetarum novem, lyricae poesews principum, fragmenta. Alcaei, Sapphus, Stesichori, Ibyci, Anacreontis, Bacchylidis, Symonidis, Alcmanis, Pindari, nonnulla etiam aliorum. Cum Latina interpretatione, partim soluta oratione, partim carmine]. [Heidelberg,] apud Hieronymum Commelinum, Elect. Palat. typographum, 1598.

Annotated copy of the first edition of the 6th-cent. BCE Greek poet Pindar by the Heidelberg professor Aemilius Portus (1550-1614). It is followed by a reprint of the popular edition of the Greek Lyric Poets by Henri Estienne (d.1598), which comes complete with author biographies. The most famous author in this latter collection is the 6th/7th-cent. BCE woman poet Sappho. Our copy is interesting for its evidence of how Pindar was studied, as shown in the sometimes dense added manuscript notes, in Greek and Latin, sometimes with crossing lines connecting note to text. The editor Portus was born in Ferrara to a Cretan Protestant, the scholar Franciscus Portus (1511-1581) - whose own commentaries on Pindar he had seen to press in 1583.

Description

One volume, 19 cms. x 11.5 cms. in binding, octavo, pp. 16, 176, 191 [1]. Signed: ):(⁸ A-L⁸, A-M⁸. Greek and Latin text, double-column. Woodcut printer's devices to title-pages. Light or medium browning, title-page curled at outer margin and slightly dusty. Single wormhole to bottom margin (blank) of much of book.  Bound in early stiffened vellum, covers double-filletted in blind, blindstamped decorations to spine, transverse spine linings from late medieval manuscript visible at front of book, all edges blue, Pindar's name in ink to spine.

Provenance: Note in red crayon to title-page: "No. 28 Ash[???]", also to same, "hinc Commelinianea +[?] editio". Early ink annotations (Greek and Latin) to c.28 pages of first part, occasional further annotations in old pencil. 

Bibliography

USTC 684136. VD16 P2796. Adams P1231, P1703.