TERENTIUS AFER, Publius.
£2,950 · Offered by Sokol Books
Accurate Estienne edition of one of the masters of Latin comedy. A liberated slave of North African origins, Terence (c. 195/185-159 BC ) is the most prominent comic playwright of ancient Rome along with Plautus. Relying extensively on the plays of the New Greek Comedy and especially those of Menander, the six comedies written by Terence enjoyed long-lasting success, were copied in several manuscripts and thus exceptionally survived all together. For almost two millenniums throughout the Middle Ages and early modern times, they were employed as model of polished Latin in schools. This is regarded as the best edition published by the humanist printer Robert Estienne, including three fundamental commentaries: the first, featuring the earliest biography of the author, by the famous grammarian Aelius Donatus (fl. mid-4th century AD); the second, complementing Donatus with an insight into the third comedy (The Self-Tormentor), by the scholar Giovanni Calfurnio (1443-1503), one of Aldus s editors; and the third, briefly illustrating Terence s metric system and vocabulary, written by Erasmus, whose emendations of the textual faults in a previous edition by Estienne himself (1529) are gladly accepted here. This copy belonged to Ren é-Alexandre Aubry, lord of Barneville and counsellor of the Parisian Parliament, died 1740. There is no record about his library, though two other books with his distinctive supralibros (Guigard, II, p. 23) have appeared on the French market in recent year
- Binding: Hardcover
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