PLUTARCH.

£39,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

Greek editio princeps and first edition in any language of this foundation text of ancient scholarship and ethics, taken into the highest esteem by generations of Western thinkers, Montaigne above all. A remarkably large paper copy which, Renouard suggests, is technically a 4to, due to the horizontal chain lines, but virtually a folio, as the original paper sheets, printed as half-sheets, were the largest ever used by Aldus. Plutarch (c.46-120 AD) was the most acclaimed Greek intellectual of his age. Born from a wealthy Boeotian family in Chaeronea, there he spent much of his life, serving as priest of Apollo in Delphi. His series of parallel biographies of famous Greek and Roman personalities won him long-lasting fame. His several other short essays are gathered under the title of Moralia , showing all the extent of his knowledge. They include major and minor philosophical questions (most famously, whether the hen or the egg came first), religious, political and historical dissertations (on Iris and Osiris; the decline of oracles; Alexander the Great s fortune and virtues; on music; Herodotus methodological shortcomings; on monarchy, democracy and oligarchy), lighter interludes like the dialogue between Odysseus and one of the wretched men turned by Circes into pigs, and more philosophical or physical studies such as the essays on hearing, chance, the control of anger, brotherly love, talkativeness, table talk and Stoicism. The relatively late appearance of the Moralia into

• Binding: Hardcover

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