Books and Manuscripts

The first Paris edition of Plato's collected works

(Paris): Ioanne Paruo & Iodoco Badio (Praelum Ascensianum), (1518). First Paris edition. Folio. (8), CCCLXXXIX ff. (some leaves misnumbered). Translated into Latin out of the Greek by Marsilio Fincini. Illustrated with decorative woodcut border on title-page, printer's device at center of same, and woodcut initials throughout text. Printed shoulder notes in Latin and Greek. Contemporary full pigskin, stamped in blind, MS. title in ink on spine, extremities worn and rubbed, boards soiled and moderately worn, upper front and rear joints splitting; all edges stained red; printed woodcut armorial shield filled-in with ink on title-page; scattered marginalia at front; scattered dampstaining in fore-edge of some leaves at front and in bottom corner of rear leaves; ex-library with book-plate on front paste-down, call number in red crayon on same, ink stamp at foot of a2. From the library of the Bishop of Vermont, with their library book-plate on front paste-down. Arthur Crawshay Alliston Hall, Library of the Bishop of Vermont, p. 52 (1898)

A rare edition of Plato's collected works--the fourth overall printed edition, and the first to be printed outside of Italy--by printing pioneer, grammarian, and bookseller, Jodocus Badius (1462-1535). Badius was one of the most active and accomplished printers in the early decades of the 16th-century in Europe. A prolific printer and promoter of humanist works, he printed close to 1,000 editions in his lifetime. Notably, Badius's printing device, featured on the title-page in this volume, depicts what is considered the earliest known representation of a printing press (Steinberg, p. 38).

Three printed editions of Plato's collected works preceded this edition. The first edition printed in any language was published by Laurentius de Alopa, Lorenzo de Alopa, and the nuns of San Jacopo di Ripoli in Florence, from 1484-85, and featured renowned Neoplatonist scholar Marsilio Fincini's (1433-99) Latin translation. In 1491 it was published in Venice by Bernardinus de Choris, also featuring Fincini's translation (this volume is based on that edition). In 1513 in Venice, Aldus Manutius printed it in the original Greek at his Aldine Press.