C. Cornelius Tacitus ex I. Lipsii accuratissima editione.

Leiden (Lugduni Batavorum), Ex officina Elzeviriana, 1634. 12mo. (XX),786,(29 index),(1 blank) p., engraved title, 1 plate with 3 portraits. Overlapping vellum 13 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 833597485; Willems 415: 'l'édition est fort belle et très recherchée'. Berghman 2145; Rahir 403; Copinger 4630; Schweiger 2,1001/1002: 'Sehr niedlicher Abdruck des Textes nach Lipsius'; Moss 2,643; Brunet 5,634; Graesse 6/2 9: 'Édition très jolie'; Ebert 22157) (Details: 5 thongs laced through the joints. Nice title engraved by C.C. Duysent, depicting the river god Tiberinus, who sits at the border of the Tiber, and holds in his arms a big jar from which water flows, and a cornucopia; behind him stands a woman who has a mirror in her hand. At the end of the preliminary pages a plate, also engraved by Duysent, showing within an oval frame 3 portraits, of Tiberius, Augustus and his wife Livia. Clear typography. Latin text only, no commentary or notes) (Condition: Vellum age-tanned, a bit soiled and slightly scuffed. Occasionally a small number has been written in ink in the margins) (Note: The Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus offered ammunition for many intellectual and political battles in 16th and 17th century Europe. The turmoil caused by the emerging new monarchies in England, France en Spain, civil and religious wars in Italy and Germany, and the plague, made Tacitus' account of the state of the early Roman Empire increasingly topical and relevant. The debate Tacitus provoked in intellectual circles was of course on Roman history, but also on literary style, in Latin and the vernacular, but more so on historical and political thought. Tacitus ideas were not original, but he brought them in a forceful lapidary way, oneliners ready for the use in debate. Tacitus became in a corrupted world 'the one true guide for those involved in the awful revolution of modern times: he 'teaches well the mode of life under tyrants, just as he teaches tyrants how to establish tyranny''. ('The Classical Tradition', Cambr. Mass., 2010, p. 921) The French humanist scholar Muretus (Marc Antoine Muret, 1526-1585) declared that 'Tacitus' descriptions of lost liberty, failed revolutions, vicious civil wars, and mad emperors amounted to a theater of our time'. (Op. cit., ibid.) § The Flemish latinist Justus Lipsius, 1547-1606, one of the most learned men of his day, was invited in 1579 to come to Leiden to the recently founded university as a Honorary Professor of History. At that date he already had produced his great Tacitus-edition, published by Plantin, a work that placed and still places him in the front rank of classical scholarship. (Antwerp 1574) His main strength lay in textual criticsm and in exegesis. His emendations are considered to be very clever, and his commentary rich. Plantin published a second edition in 1581, with new emendations and variae lectiones. Lipsius's third edition, Antwerp 1585, offered a new recension. The fourth edition was published by the son in law of Plantin, Franciscus Raphelengius, in Leiden in 1588. Lipsius remained in Leiden for 11 years, a period of his greatest productivity. Lipsius praised Tacitus as a teacher of vital political lessons. In his 'Politics' ('Politicorum sive Civilis doctrinae libri sex', 1589) 'a brilliant textbook in mosaic form, composed of passages from the ancients, far more of them taken from Tacitus than from any other source- Lipsius showed how to make a version of Tacitus' analysis of empire fit the practical needs of the modern governing classes'. (Op. cit., ibid.) At the University of Leiden, the intellectual powerhouse of the new Dutch Republic, 'dozens of young intellectuals busied themselves in what they called the study of 'politics'. They studied and summarized in pointed, abrupt, witty Latin theses the Tacitean lessons about absolute monarchy'. (Op. cit., 922) By reading Tacitus' 'Annals' and 'Histories' the student could learn what constructive role the members of the social elite could play in the creation of a political and military system. Dutch students found ammunition especially in Tacitus' 'Germania', a detailed description of the peoples in Germany and the Low Countries. To show that the new Dutch Republic, founded in 1588, 'rested on solid historical foundations, they turned to Tacitus, who made clear that their ancestors, the Batavi, had resisted the tyranny of Rome, just as the modern citizens of Holland and Zeeland resisted that of Spain'. (Op.cit., 923)) (Collation: *10, A-2L12 (leaf 2L12 verso blank) (Photographs on request)