Cicero (106-43 BCE)
A bifolium from De Natura Deorum, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, c.1460s].
A large and extremely handsome bifolium from what must have been an important humanist manuscript of Cicero’s exposition of the three schools of philosophy prevalent in his day: the Epicurean, the Stoic, and the Academic.

Each leaf c.307 x 217mm. The outer bifolium of a gathering, 32 lines written in a very fine rounded humanistic minuscule, written space 200 x 114mm., beginning in Book 1.18 ‘[...] modo viderat animo sed etiam sic tractat [...] and ending in 1.21 on the verso of the first leaf ‘nihil sane ex me audire potuisses mihi [...]; and continuing on the second with 1.35 [acce]debat quam figura. An quicq[uam] tam puerile dici pot[est] [...]’ and ending in 1.37 ‘Si quidem agens aliquid ne deus quidem’, catchword survives, contemporary marginal notes, one illuminated initial with marginal sprays on a red and blue ground with white tracery (marginal staining).

Provenance:
(1) 16th-century accounting notes in the margins.
(2) Sotheby’s, 18 June 2002, part of lot 2.
(3) Colker MS 499; acquired in 2002 from Maggs.

The present bifolium is from the first book of De natura deorum, in which Cicero puts forth the Epicurean case through the character of Velleius the Epicurean, and is then refuted by Cotta the Sceptic. Manuscripts of the De natura deorum are rare on the market.

This lot is offered without reserve.
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