Historiarum Philippicarum, in Latin, fragment of an illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, 15th century]

Marcus Junianus Justinus (fl. 2nd century)
Historiarum Philippicarum, in Latin, fragment of an illuminated manuscript on vellum [Italy, 15th century]
A 15th- century fragment of Justinus’s Historiae Philippicae, abridged from the great Gallo-Roman historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus.

c.230 x 150mm. i + 14 + i leaves, misbound, contemporary foliation: 79-82, 77-78, 83-90, some catchwords preserved, 25 lines, ruled space: c.146 x 100mm, marginal annotations in a later hand, 6 illuminated initials on green and purple grounds (leaves replaced on stubs, losses and marginal staining throughout, final four folios with losses at edges of the text block). Half calf.

Provenance:
(1) James Taylor, bookseller of 162 Great Surrey Street, London; acquired from him in the 1820s or ‘30s by:
(2) Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872), English antiquary and book collector who amassed the largest collection of manuscript material in the 19^th century: his MS 4045, with his stencilled crest ‘Sir T.P. / Middle Hill / 4045’.
(3) Colker MS 31; acquired in 1963 from Maggs

Content:
Historiarum Philippicarum, books XXVI (part) and XXVII-XXXI, opening ‘[Illae, quasi in perpetuum] cum viris exulaturae’, and ending ‘Aliaque esse patris officia [...]’ ff.1-4,7-14. The misbound folios (ff.5-6) contain book XVIII (part), opening ‘[heredibus] institutis, sed populus […]’ and ending at f.6, line 12 ‘[…] ad se accessitis Elysse nuptias sub belli […]’; here the text continues without indication of a break into book XXV-XXVI (part), starting ‘[…] mulier[um] q[uam] viror[um] virtute exceptus […]’, with the text subsequently running continuously to the opening of f.1.

The Historiarum Philippicarum is an expansive history of the world based on Pompeius Trogus’s Historiae Philippicae, with a special focus on the Macedonian Empire. Pompeius Trogus’s history survives only in excerpts appearing in the work of later authors like Vopiscus, Jerome and Augustine, and, as in the present case, in the loose epitome of Justinus, an enigmatic abridger about whom little is known.

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