PINDAR (BENEDICTUS, Johannes)

PINDAR; Benedictus, Johannes (ed.). Pindari Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia.

Saumur, ex typis Petri Piededii, 1620.

 

 

 

 

£ 1,500

 

4to, (xvi) 756 (lvi), ã4 ê4 A-5I4 5K2 (2H2, 3P3, 4N3 blanks). Roman, Greek, and Italic letter. Small t-p vignette, large decorated initials, head- and tailpieces, and meanders. Early ms. annotations on front endpaper reporting Horace’s Ode 4.2 (“Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari…”), “emptus in auctione 3-15-0” and the autograph of “Berlanus”. Some light age yellowing and minor spotting, waterstaining at lower gutter throughout the first half of the book. In contemporary vellum, Yapp edges, ink title to spine, a.e.r.

 

This is one of the most important early seventeenth-century editions of Pindar, which followed Erasmus Schmid’s edition (Wittenberg 1616). Johannes Benedictus, or Jean Benoist, was a German scholar and physician, King’s Professor of Greek in Saumur.