Opera græca. Edited Demetrios Chalcondyle. Florence, [printer of the Vergilius, probably Bartolomeo de' Libri] with the typeface of Demetrios Damilas, at the expense of Bernardo and Nerio Nerlio, December 9, 1488 [not before January 13, 1489, date of the dedication].
Two volumes in one folio (333 x 230 mm), (440) ff. including 2 blank ff. E10 and &&6 (A-D8 E10 A-Z8 &8 cum8 rum8; AA-ZZ8 &&). 39 lines. Contents: A1r: dedicatory epistle of Bernardo Nerlio to Peter of Medici (in Latin); A1v: preface of the editor Demetrios Chalcondyle; A3r: life of Homer by Herodotus; B1r: life of Homer by Plutarch; E7v: oration of Dion Cassius on Homer; A1r: Iliad; AA1r: Odyssey; XX2r: Batrachomyomachy; XX6r: Hymns to Apollo; &&5v: colophon in Greek. Highlighting and marginalia in Greek by a contemporary hand. 17th century stiff vellum, smooth spine, gilt title in a frame. (Restorations to the headpieces and corners; foxing and marginal spotting, angular lack at L2, without affecting the text.)
First edition of the Iliad and the Odyssey, masterpieces of ancient Greece and founders of Western culture.
Only the Batrachomyomachia had previously been printed in a Greco-Latin edition. This considerable undertaking was led by the Athenian scholar Demetrios Chalcondyle (1423-1511), who sought the financial support of two wealthy patricians of Florence, the brothers Bernardo and Nerio Nerlio. To establish the text, Chalcondyle relied on the grammatical and philological commentary of Eustathius of Thessalonica, one of the greatest scholars of the 12th century. In his preface, however, Chalcondyle warns the reader that the text of the Hymns and the Batrachomyomachia still leaves something to be desired. The book was printed with type designed and engraved by Demetrios Damilas, in the workshop of the printer of the Vergilius of 1487 (according to Coppinger 6061, which relies on the presence of the same Roman type in the dedicatory epistle), whom Proctor identified with Bartolomeo de' Libri, a Florentine priest-printer-librarian. For the occasion, Damilas, a copyist and engraver of punches of Cretan origin, had the typefaces used for his edition of the Epitome of Lascaris (Milan, 1476) - the first book to be printed in Greek - recast from matrices he had brought from Milan, with a few alterations and numerous additions. "The type used was that of Demetrius Damilas, whose 'labor and skill' ... is acknowledged in the colophon" (Nicolas Barker, Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script & Type in the Fifteenth Century.)
REFERENCES
Goff H300; Polain (B) 1983; GW 12895; Proctor, 6194; PMM no. 31; Antoine Coron, Des livres rares depuis l'invention de l'imprimerie, no. 19; ISTC ih00300000.
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