Commentarii Ioannis Britannici in Iuvenalem

Brescia: ab Angelo & Iacobo Britan[n]icis fratribus, 1501. FIRST EDITION WITH THE COMMENTARY of GIOVANNI BRITANNICO, printed by his brothers Angelo and Jacopo. The printers have given their brother first billing on the title page: “The Commentary of Giovanni Britannico on Juvenal”. Hardcover. Fine. Bound in contemporary half calf over wooden boards (leather of spine restored, boards worn with a little loss at the upper corner of the front board; the closing straps preserved, lacking one clasp.) A nice copy of this post-incunable, with crisp leaves, some marginal soiling and damp-stains, small wormholes in the binding affecting the first and last (truncated) leaves. “The ‘Satires’ address two main themes: the corruption of society in the city of Rome and human brutality and folly. In the first Satire, Juvenal declares that vice, crime, and the misuse of wealth have reached such a peak that it is impossible not to write satire.”(EB)

"Rancor towards society -and hidden resentment at not belonging to it- are important elements in the indignant satire of Juvenal, who represents the Italian middle class that in the daily life of the Empire’s cosmopolitan capital witnessed the constant subversion of the moral and political values of the national, republican tradition. Lacking an ethical-political awareness that could explain this turbulent development, the variety and mutability of the social picture, Juvenal looks upon this confused spectacle (which relegates him to the edges of the scene) as a tragedy performed in grotesque masks, and he does not even have the bitter satisfaction of invective.

"Juvenal transforms profoundly the formal principles of the satiric genre, breaking the traditional link with comedy and bringing satire near to tragedy, on the level of content and style, which is similarly ‘sublime.’ A familiar technique in Juvenal is the employment of epic-tragic language precisely in connection with the coarsest, most vulgar content; his purpose is to bring out the lowness of the material by contrasting it with the loftiness of the form of the expression. His realism, which richly documents for us the habits and usages of daily life at the time, strongly tends to distortion, of course, because he is dealing with figures and scenes of such coarseness that the indignant moralist’s biliousness vents itself on them."(Conte)

“Juvenal’s 16 satiric poems were first published at intervals in five separate books. Book One, containing Satires 1–5, was issued c. 100–110 ce; Book Two, with Satire 6, c. 115; Book Three, which comprises Satires 7–9, contains what must be a reference to Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 138; Book Four, made up of Satires 10–12, contains no datable allusion; and Book Five, containing Satires 13–16, has two references to the year 127.”(Britannica). (Inventory #: 5167)