Herodotus, 8 March [after 30 March] 1494

HERODOTUS (c.490–c.425 B.C.). Historiae. Translated by Laurentius Valla. Edited by Antonius Mancinellus. Venice: Johannes and Gregorius de Gregoriis, de Forlivio, 8 March [after 30 March] 1494.

Third edition of one of the greatest historical works, with renowned woodcut border. ‘This is probably the most splendid of all the examples of decorative art applied to books at that period’, writes Friedrich Lippmann in The Art of Wood-Engraving in Italy in the Fifteenth Century about the impressive woodcut border that frames the title-page of this edition. Alternately treated as either the originator of the historical method or as ‘the father of lies’, Herodotus is nonetheless considered ‘the earliest historian; his predecessors were by contrast chroniclers’ (PMM). His work, which deals primarily with the history of the Persian wars with the Greek city states, was particularly relevant in the Renaissance, when the Ottomans – another Eastern enemy both alien and strangely familiar – threatened European hegemony. Herodotus composed his history of the Persian wars on an unprecedented scale and comprehensiveness, and it became a model for subsequent classical historiography.

The present edition, preceded only by those of 1474 (Venice: Jacobus Rubeus) and 1475 (Rome: Arnoldus Pannartz), is celebrated for having one of the most handsome woodcut borders of the 15th century. It frames a larger cut of the crowning of Herodotus by Apollo and the incipit; Essling saw the hand of the Poliphili Master in these fluid cuts. HC *8472; BMC V 345; BSB-Ink H-122; Bod-inc H-056; CIBN H-56; Essling 735; GW 12323; Goff H-90; ISTC ih00090000.

Median folio (317 × 210 mm). 142 leaves. Woodcut illustration, woodcut border, initial spaces with guide-letters, red and blue initials (light toning around edge, a few scattered wormholes at front). 18th-century (?) reversed calf, later morocco label on spine, remains of ties, manuscript title on lower fore-edge, remains of a few index tabs. Provenance: 4-page index in a contemporary hand at end perhaps corresponding to a work once bound in, a few contemporary marginal comments – Georg Kloss (bookplate).