Strabo. Geographia. Venice, Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Strabo. Geographia. Venice, Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Strabo.
Geographia.
Venice, Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
Strabo.
Geographia. Venice, Vindelinus de Spira, 1472.
2o (398 x 280 mm). Collation: [a-c10, d8, e8, f-h10, i8, k8, l-n10, o-p8, q-s10, t8, v8-1, x-y10, z8, A8]. First and last leaves blank. 219 leaves. Text on 51 lines. Roman type 1:110R2 and Greek type 110. Capital spaces, with guide-letters, and some spaces for Greek. Nineteenth-century vellum over boards, corners slightly worn. A very good and wide-margined copy, some minor marginal worming. Light wear to corners, manuscript title on fore-edge.
Provenance: from the library of the bibliophile George Dunn (1865-1912; bookplate on the front pastedown); C.S. Ascherson (bookplate on the front pastedown); Frank S. Streeter Library
First Venetian edition – and second overall – of one of the earliest and most important scientific treatises on historical geography.
The edition is based on the first Latin edition by Sweynheym and Pannartz, printed in 1469. Strabo’s only surviving work, the Geography constituted the first attempt at a unified treatise of geographical knowledge. The work surveys the topography, history and political characteristics of the principal regions of the Roman world. In bringing up to date the work of the first systematic geographer, Erastothenes (3rd century B.C.), whose writings are now lost, Strabo relied on other Greek sources but paid scant attention to recent Roman records. His treatise brought together philosophy, political theory, geology, mathematics, and history. Following Erastothenes, he presented the world as a single ocean-girt landmass on the northern half of a sphere, immobile within a revolving universe. He "devoted much attention to the forces that had formed the oikoumene [inhabited land]... Strabo suggested that some islands were torn from the mainland by earthquakes, while others (including Sicily) were thrown up by volcanic action. He gave examples of both local and widespread land subsidence and alluded to the uprising of seabeds with consequent flooding; he further described the silting of rivers that form alluvial plains and deltas" (DSB). His descriptions of the Mediterranean regions, Asia Minor and Egypt are excellent, while those of Gaul, Britain and Greece are weaker (the errors relating to his native country may have been due to his excessive veneration of Homer, whose authority he extended to geography). That Strabo's geography was unknown to the Romans, even to Pliny the Elder, in spite of his expressed wish that it be read by the statesmen and rulers of the Empire, is evidence that it may have been written far from Rome. The work was not generally known until the 5th century, but came to be the standard geographical reference work during the Middle Ages.
BMC V,161; Goff S-794; HC 15087*; Pr 4042