EARLY POCKET SIZE ALDINE EDITION OF VALERIUS MAXIMUS’ DEEDS AND SAYINGS

Valerius Maximus. Exempla quatuor et viginti nuper inuenta ante caput de ominibus. Venetiis, in aedibus Aldi et Andreae soceri, mense octobri 1514.

8vo (148x92 mm), 18th century full calf binding, gilt author’s name on red leather label at four raised bands spine, gilt floral decoration at spine sections, ff. 216.

Aldo Manutius’ printer device at title page and at verso of last leaf.

Early pocket size Aldine edition of Valerius Maximus’ «Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings» printed by Aldus Manutius the Elder.

Second Aldine edition of Facta et dicta memorabilia, a collection of historical anecdotes functional to orators, printed by Aldo in 1502. The 1514 edition presents on the first 3 leaves the preface letter from Aldo to J. Ludbranc, October 1502, and the letter to Cuspiniani, April 1503.

Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius (14 AD to 37 AD).

The style of Valerius's writings seems to indicate that he was a professional rhetorician. In his preface he intimates that his work is intended as a commonplace book of historical anecdotes for use in the schools of rhetoric, where the pupils were trained in the art of embellishing speeches by references to history. According to the manuscripts, its title is «Nine Books of Memorable Deeds and Sayings» (Factorum ac dictorum memorabilium). The stories are loosely and irregularly arranged, each book being divided into sections, and each section bearing as its title the topic, most commonly some virtue or vice, or some merit or demerit, which the stories in the section are intended to illustrate.

Most of the tales are from Roman history, but each section has an appendix consisting of extracts from the annals of other peoples, principally the Greeks. The exposition exhibits strongly the two currents of feeling which are intermingled by almost every Roman writer of the Empire—the feeling that the Romans of the writer's own day are degenerate creatures when confronted with their own republican predecessors, and the feeling that, however degenerate, the latter-day Romans still tower above the other peoples of the world, and in particular are morally superior to the Greeks.

The author's chief sources are Cicero, Livy, Sallust and Pompeius Trogus, especially the first two. Valerius's treatment of his material is careless and unintelligent in the extreme; but in spite of his contusions, contradictions and anachronisms, the excerpts are apt illustrations, from the rhetorician's point of view, of the circumstance or quality they were intended to illustrate. And even on the historical side we owe something to Valerius. He often used sources now lost, and where he touches on his own time he affords us some glimpses of the much debated and very imperfectly recorded reign of Tiberius.

He is also a typical example of Silver Latin, a literary period often criticised for poor writers.

References: Renouard 69.9; Brunet V, 1069; CNCE 37496. IT\ICCU\LIAE\000714. OCLC, 270105072.

A fine copy.