Historia Naturale Di G. Plinio Secondo, Tradotta per M. Lodouico Domenichi, Con le Postille in Margine, Nelle quali, o vengeno sefnate le cose ntabili, o citati altri Auttori, che della stessa materia habbiano scritto, o dichiarati i luoghi difficili, o posti i nomi di Geografica moderni. In Venetia, Apresso Alessandro Griffio, 1580.
A fantastic early printed example of Pliny's famous Natural History, covering topics as broad as Magic, Astronomy, Zoology, and Modelling. This copy is earlier than the first attempted English translation of Pliny's Natural History, and has particularly beautiful typography rather reminiscent of the Aldine Press with their famous italic font.
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Pliny's Natural History consists of 37 books. Pliny devised a summarium, or list of contents, at the beginning of the work that was later interpreted by modern printers as a table of contents.
In order of original appearance throughout Pliny's Natural History, it contains: Astronomy, Meterology, Geography, Ethnography, Anthropology, Human Physiology, Zoology (including mammals, snaked, marine animals, birds, and insects), Botany (including agriculture and horitculture), Pharmacology, Magic, Water, Aquatic Life, Mining, Mineralogy, Statuary in Bronze, Art (and Art History), Modelling, Sculpture in Marble, and Precious Stones and Gems.
Pliny himself remarked on his purpose in writing the Natural History:
"My subject is a barren one – the world of nature, or in other words life; and that subject in its least elevated department, and employing either rustic terms or foreign, nay barbarian words that actually have to be introduced with an apology. Moreover, the path is not a beaten highway of authorship, nor one in which the mind is eager to range: there is not one of us who has made the same venture, nor yet one among the Greeks who has tackled single-handed all departments of the subject."
Pliny's writing style emulates that of Seneca. It aims less at clarity and vividness than at epigrammatic point. It contains many antitheses, questions, exclamations, tropes, metaphors, and other mannerisms of the Silver Age. His sentence structure is often loose and straggling. There is heavy use of the ablative absolute, and ablative phrases are often appended in a kind of vague "apposition" to express the author's own opinion of an immediately previous statement, e.g., "dixit (Apelles) ... uno se praestare, quod manum de tabula sciret tollere, memorabili praecepto nocere saepe nimiam diligentiam."
Quite interestingly, the first translation into English didn't occur until 1601, and the first complete translation wasn't until 1855!
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Size: 148 x 200 mm (approx.)
Condition:
[pp.1-15; 33-55, pp.1-1188]
Full contemporary calf leather, circa the late 18th century to early 19th century. Tooled red morocco label to the spine. Spine rubbed with minor loss at the head. Joints rubbed but without structural fault with both boards securely attached. Light shelf wear. Boards very good. Later endpapers and blanks. Lacks pp.16-32 of the Libro Primo else collates as complete, including the complete text collated as complete in 1188pp. Some light wormholing at the upper margin of pp.620-698 not affecting the text. Generally clean through the text block, some light staining but none obscuring the legibility of any text. The title page is more heavily toned as typical. Some losses to the corners of a few leaves, including the title page and the following few leaves, and pp.1185-1188, the latter of which includes a small amount of text loss.
[Gudger, E.W. (1924). Pliny's Historia Naturalis. The Most Popular Natural History Ever Published. Isis, 6(3), 269-281].
