Hardcover
1671 · Amsterdam
by GASTRONOMY. CODICOLOGY. Petronius Arbiter, Titus (d. 66 A.D.)
Amsterdam: Johannes Blaeu, 1669 and, 1671. FIRST COMPLETE EDITION. Hardcover. Fine. Bound in contemporary English calf (corners lightly bumped.) A fine copy, with the added, engraved title page by Romeyn de Hooghe (1645-1708). Divisional title page for the "Fragmentum". Both title pages bear Blaeu's printer's device. Michael Hadrianides' (Michael Adriaens') 1669 edition of Petronius is the first to incorporate the manuscript discovered in Traù, Croatia, which contained the hitherto unknown text of the "Cena Trimalchionis" (the Dinner of Trimalchio), perhaps the most famous part of Petronius' novel. This is also the first edition to contain all the fragments of the novel that we currently possess. This copy is bound together with the -often lacking- 1671 edition of the "Integrum Fragmentum", the "entire fragment" which prints the text of the Traù manuscript in full, along with the fascinating "Apologia" of Marino Statileo, who discovered the manuscript in Croatia. The "Apologia", in which the physical aspects of the manuscript are assessed to determine its age and authenticity, marks an important chapter in the history of paleography and codicology (see below.)
"The story of Petronius' partial rescue during the Renaissance is full of twists and ironies; Petronius himself would have enjoyed it. He was saved from oblivion by Poggio Bracciolini's discovery, in 1420 in Cologne, of a manuscript containing Carolingian excerpts written continuously. This version, which favored verse and dialogue over description and narration and attempted to repress the novel's exuberant homosexuality, formed the basis of the editio princeps, published in Milan in 1482. It was not until the sixteenth century that scholars doubled the amount of text available. The first expanded edition, the 'editio Tornaesiana', was published in Lyon in 1575 but did not contain the still unknown "Dinner of Trimalchio"(Cena Trimalchionis). The 'Dinner' had been copied for Poggio in 1423 in Florence, but then vanished; the text was not rediscovered until almost a century later, by Marino Statileo in Trogir (Traù) in Dalmatia (Croatia), and was not published until 1664." (Conte)
It is Poggio's copy, which disappeared while on loan to Niccolò de' Niccoli, and not the original Cologne manuscript, that reappeared in Croatia around 1650. It's publication "in a very incorrect state" in 1664 "immediately gave rise to a fierce controversy, in which the most learned men of that day took a share, one party receiving it without suspicion as a genuine relic of antiquity, while their opponents, with great vehemence, contended that it was spurious. The strife was not quelled until the year 1669, when the manuscript was dispatched from the Library of the proprietor, Nicolaus Cippius, at Traù, to Rome, where, having been narrowly scrutinized by the most competent judges, it was finally pronounced to be at least three hundred years old, and, since no forgery of such a nature could have been executed at that epoch, the skeptics were compelled reluctantly to admit that their doubts were ill-founded."(Allinson). (Inventory #: 5093)
"The story of Petronius' partial rescue during the Renaissance is full of twists and ironies; Petronius himself would have enjoyed it. He was saved from oblivion by Poggio Bracciolini's discovery, in 1420 in Cologne, of a manuscript containing Carolingian excerpts written continuously. This version, which favored verse and dialogue over description and narration and attempted to repress the novel's exuberant homosexuality, formed the basis of the editio princeps, published in Milan in 1482. It was not until the sixteenth century that scholars doubled the amount of text available. The first expanded edition, the 'editio Tornaesiana', was published in Lyon in 1575 but did not contain the still unknown "Dinner of Trimalchio"(Cena Trimalchionis). The 'Dinner' had been copied for Poggio in 1423 in Florence, but then vanished; the text was not rediscovered until almost a century later, by Marino Statileo in Trogir (Traù) in Dalmatia (Croatia), and was not published until 1664." (Conte)
It is Poggio's copy, which disappeared while on loan to Niccolò de' Niccoli, and not the original Cologne manuscript, that reappeared in Croatia around 1650. It's publication "in a very incorrect state" in 1664 "immediately gave rise to a fierce controversy, in which the most learned men of that day took a share, one party receiving it without suspicion as a genuine relic of antiquity, while their opponents, with great vehemence, contended that it was spurious. The strife was not quelled until the year 1669, when the manuscript was dispatched from the Library of the proprietor, Nicolaus Cippius, at Traù, to Rome, where, having been narrowly scrutinized by the most competent judges, it was finally pronounced to be at least three hundred years old, and, since no forgery of such a nature could have been executed at that epoch, the skeptics were compelled reluctantly to admit that their doubts were ill-founded."(Allinson). (Inventory #: 5093)