The original Greek text of Ptolemy's Planisphere is lost. To the present Latin translation, made by an unknown hand from the Arabic, is appended (fol. 25) this subscription: Facta est translatio haec Tolosae Cal. Iunii Anno Domini MCXLIIII. The revival of the study of the Greek mathematicians in the sixteenth century was largely due to the admirable translations and commentaries of Federigo Commandino of Urbino (1509-75). This edition of Ptolemy's Planisphere still remains the best. In the same year Paulus printed Archimedis Opera nonnulla a Federico Commandino Vrbinate nuper in latinum conversa et commentariis illustrata.
Uncut copy, bound in blue morocco, with vellum fly-leaves. Leaf 8 3/4 × 6 1/2 in. From the Syston Park library with book-plate and monogram of Sir John Hayford Thorold.
34. LIVIUS, Titus. Historiarum ab urbe condita libri. Venetiis, in ædibus Manutianis, 1572.
Title: T.LIVII PATAVINI, Historiarum ab urbe condita, LIBRI. QVI. EXSTANT XXXV CVM. VNIVERSAE. HISTORIAE. EPITOMIS Caroli Sigonij Scholia, quibus ijdem libri, atque epitomae partim emendantur, partim etiam explanantur, Ab Auctore multis in partibus aucta. [Printer's device] VENETIIS ∞ DLXXII. In Aedibus Manutianis.
Folio. Part 1. 48 unnumbered preliminary leaves containing title, preface of Sigonius, Veterum scriptorum de T. Liuio testimonia ab Aldo Manutio Paulli F. Aldi N. collecta, Libri primi epitome, Rerum et vocum apud T. Liuium index copiosissimus; 399 numbered leaves of text (blank last leaf wanting). Part 2. Caroli Sigonii Scholia, with separate title and device, 109 numbered leaves and blank end leaf. Part 3. Caroli Sigonii Livianorum Scholiorum aliquot Defensiones adversus Glareanum et Robortellum, with separate title and device, 52 numbered pages. Roman character, except epitomae i-xlv and index which are in the italic type of the Ptolemy commentary, and the preface which is a large and unusual italic, first found in a notice prefixed to the Medici antiqui of 1547, once as a text type in 1550, afterwards only in an occasional preface or title-page. Like the smaller italic of Paulus it is provided with capitals. The large woodcut initials of the several books belong to the mythological series found in the Ptolemy but are here much worn. Renouard, p. 215.
Editions of Livy with the Scholia of Sigonius were issued from the Aldine press in 1555, 1566, 1572 and 1592. This third edition is distinguished from those which preceded it by some additions to the Scholia and an appendix in which the editor defends his views on the chronology of Livy against the attacks of two opponents. But typographically it is inferior to the second edition as the second was inferior to the first, which alone was printed under the active supervision of Paulus. In 1561 he went to Rome to undertake the direction of a press which Pius IV. was about to establish and died there in 1574, having made only one brief visit to Venice in the intervening thirteen years. In his absence the Venice press, when not inactive or leased, was mainly in the charge of his son, the younger Aldus (1547-97), who in spite of the promise of his early years failed both as a scholar and as a printer to sustain the reputation of his father and grandfather. To the present edition Aldus contributed the Veterum scriptorum de T. Liuio testimonia, and he is also unquestionably responsible for the large and strange device which replaces the simple anchor for which his father had shown so marked a preference. It consists of the arms granted to Paulus in 1571 by the Emperor Maximilian II. (in which the Aldine anchor occupies a subordinate place) surrounded by a border of heavy ornament with the addition: Ex privilegio Maximiliani II. Imp. Caes. Aug. When his father's death had made him the head of the press he continued for some years to employ the same device. For the Livy of 1592, much inferior to the present edition, and of interest only as showing the decline into which the Aldine press, and the Italian presses in general, had fallen at the end of the sixteenth century, he was only indirectly responsible. He left Venice in 1585 and spent the last years of his life at Rome, as professor of belles-lettres and joint director of the Vatican press.
35. BIBLIA LATINA. Parisiis, Yolande Bonhomme, vidua Thielmanni Kerver, August 14, 1549.
Title: Biblia sacra, integrum vtriusque testamenti corpus complectens, diligenter recognita et emendata. Cum concordantijs simul et argumentis: cumque iuris canonici allegationibus passim adnotatis. Insuper in calce eiusdem annexe sunt nominum Hebraicorum, Chaldeorum, atque Grecorum interpretationes. Huic editioni adiectus est Index rerum et sententiarum vetris et noui testamenti. [Printer's device (shield bearing the initials T. K. suspended from a tree and supported by two unicorns, with name THIELMAN.KERVER. at foot), both the title and the device framed in a woodcut border]. Fol. 562a, Colophon: Parisijs, ex officina libraria yolande bonhomme, Uidue spectabilis viri Thielmanni Keruer, sub signo vnicornis in vico sancti Jacobi vbi et venundatur. Absolutum Anno domini Millesimo quingentesimo quadragesimo nono Decimo nono Calendas Septembris. [Printer's device on verso].
Octavo. Sign. A8, B4, a-z, aa-zz, A-Y8, Z6, aaa-eee8. 602 leaves, comprising 12 preliminary unnumbered leaves containing title, Ad divinarum literarum verarumque divitiarum amatores exhortatio, Librorum ordo, Biblie summarium. Gabriel Bruno's Tabula alphabetica historiarum; fol. i-cccccxx, text; 30 unnumbered leaves Index rerum et sententiarum; 40 unnumbered leaves Interpretationes nominum Hebraicorum, etc. Very small gothic letter, double columns, 58 lines to the column. Six- to eight-line woodcut initials of the several books, the unicorns of Kerver's device appearing in that of Gen. i. Le Long-Masch iii, 2, 149.
The octavo Latin Bibles of the Kerver press, fifteen editions of which appeared between 1508 and 1560, were closely patterned after Froben's edition, Basel, 1591 (the first Bible printed in octavo form), both as regards the text, based on the "Fontibus ex Græcis" editions, 1478 ff., and the introductory and supplementary matter of various origin accompanying it. The earliest of these supplements, Interpretationes nominum Hebraicorum, an etymological index of Hebrew proper names, appeared first in the Bible of Sweynheym and Pannartz, Rome, 1471, and was reprinted without change in most of the editions previous to 1515. In the Complutensian Polyglot it underwent revision and the revised form appears in all the editions of Yolande Bonhomme, with due acknowledgment to Cardinal Ximenes. The Index rerum et sententiarum, however, announced in the title as a new addition to this edition (as it had been also announced in the edition of 1546, not mentioned by Masch and Copinger, of which this is an exact duplicate) was borrowed from the Bible of Robert Stephens, Paris, 1534, without acknowledgment, perhaps in order the better to escape the suspicion of heresy attached to his work. In Copinger's chronological table of the printed editions of the Latin Bible during the 15th and 16th centuries (Incunabula Biblica, p. 207) this is no. 339, total number 562.