JUSTINUS, Marcus Junianus

by Marcus Junianus Justinus

£9,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

A beautiful copy of the first edition of Claude de Seyssel s influential translation of Justinus history, with his important dedication to Louis XII, finely printed by Vascosan the year before he was made King s printer. Justinus was a second century Roman historian. He describes this, his most notable work, as a collection of the most interesting and important passages from Pompeius Trogus Historiae philippicae et totius mundi origina et terrae situs , written in the time of Augustus and now lost. This was a general history of those parts of the world that had come under the auspices of Alexander the Great, and takes as its main theme the Macedonian Empire founded by his father Philip. The last event it records (in Justinius version) is in 20 B.C. Through his frequent digressions, Justinus here produces not an epitome but rather a useful and sometimes elegant anthology based on the work. It was very popular in the Middle Ages, when the author was frequently confused with Justin Martyr Claude de Seyssel, (c.1450-1520) was a Savoyard scholar, diplomat, and churchman, successively Bishop of Marseille and archbishop of Turin. He served under Louis XII and was sent on diplomatic missions in Flanders, Switzerland, England and Italy. He collaborated with the Byzantine refugee Janus Lascaris on translations of ancient Greek historians, Lascaris translating from Greek to Latin and Seyssel from Latin to French; between them they produced the first French translations of Herodotus, Thu

• Binding: Hardcover

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