Opus Emendatum.

Title printed within an elaborate woodcut historiated border; 6 woodcuts in text at the opening of each Satire; plus woodcut white-on-black decorated and historiated initials of various sizes, including a 17-line initial 'S' on A4v. Text in roman letter, surrounded by commentary printed in smaller roman and occasional Greek type. Text in Latin (commentaries with many passages in Greek). Folio. Bound in modern period-style, blind-tooled, ¼-leather over wooden boards; printed paper label in gothic script on cover. Printed in Venice by Bernardino Viani, 15 December 1520. (Adams P-736; Sander 5569; Panzer VIII 461, 127; Schweiger II, p.708).

Based on the 1516 Venice edition by Johannes Rubeus Vercellensis. The text of Persius' Satires is surrounded with commentaries by the noted Renaissance humanists Johannes Baptista Plautius, Johannes Britannicus, and Bartholomaeus Fontius, as well as those ascribed (perhaps spuriously) to Persius' friend, the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus. The woodcuts "were originally designed to illustrate an edition of Juvenal as the legends on them show." (M. Morgan, A Bibliography of Persius, 58, p.14).

Persius was a "stoic poet whose Latin satires reached a higher moral tone than those of other classical Latin poets . . . A pupil and friend of the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus and a fellow student of the poet Lucan, who admired all he wrote, Persius discovered his vocation as a satirist through reading the 10th book of Lucilius. He wrote painstakingly, and his book of satires was still incomplete at his premature death. The book, edited by his friends Cornutus and Caesius Bassus, was an immediate success. The six satires, amounting to 650 lines, are in hexameters; but what appears as a prologue, in which Persius (an extremely wealthy man) ironically asserts that he writes to earn his bread, not because he is inspired, is in choliambics. The first satire censures literary tastes of the day, reflecting the decadence of national morals. The remaining books are philosophical discussions on themes often treated by Seneca, such as what may rightly be asked of the gods, the necessity of self-knowledge for public men, and the Stoic doctrine of freedom." (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

On verso of title is a short address to the reader by Filippo Beroaldo and 3 prefatory poems; further preliminaries include dedicatory epistles by Johannes Baptista Plautius to Jacopo Antonio Sanvitale Count of Fontanellato, and by Johannes Britannicus addressed to the Senate and people of Brescia, several biographical sketches on Persius (Vitae Persii, and other prefatory material, as well as a Vocabulorum Index (B1r-4v). At the end of the volume is Bartholomaeus Fontius' epistle to Franciscus Saxetus and Ad lecture.

Several leaves moderately browned; occasional light marginal soiling; a few harmless marginal paper-flaws (not affecting text). Leaf F5 with a long closed tear (tissue-repaired) without loss. A very nice, clean, wide-margined example of this scarce, attractively illustrated post-incunable edition.