AVIENUS, Rufus Festus.

by Rufus Festus Avienus

£25,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

.A very good, well-margined copy of the first edition, of this lavishly illustrated volume with the first celestial map printed in a book, in the form of a planisphere. This printed map is a much-simplified, mirror-image version of the planispheres found in humanist mss. The fact that it is presented as a mirror-image to the rest of the planispheres probably reflects its conversion from ms. drawing to a wood block image (Dekker, 180). This medico-geographico-astrological compendium, edited by Victor Pisanus (d.1549), patrician of Venice , comprises six texts of which the first, fourth and sixth as present in their first editions. There are Latin translations (one fragmentary) of the verse composition on the celestial sphere, called Phaenomena , by Aratus (310-240 BC), a Greek poet at the service of the Macedonian king Antigonus Gonata. Here Germanicus s translation cum commentary itself the subject of later commentaries is lavishly illustrated with woodcuts of zodiacal signs and personified constellations. Of these, 4 were bespoke; the remaining were reversed reproductions from Hyginus s Poetica astronomica (Cantamessa I, 522; BMC V, 295). Although heavily borrowed from Eudoxius of Cnidus s namesake text, Phaenomena in its various Latin renditions was a very influential astrological text in medieval Europe. The compendium also features Avienus s Latin translation of De situ orbis by Dionysius Periegetes, who lived in Alexandria in the 2.nd. or 3.rd. century AD. This was a pop

• Binding: Hardcover

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