Pollux, Onomasticon, Venice, Aldo Manuzio, 1502, eighteenth-century English brown calf

Pollux, Julius. Iouliou Polideukous Onomasticon. Iulii Pollucis Vocabularium [Greek and Latin]. Venice: Aldo Manuzio, April 1502

A third copy of the editio princeps of Pollux’s influential dictionary/encyclopedia, with scholarly annotations offering alternate readings from variant manuscripts of the text, possibly by Wolfgang Seber (1573–1634), German classical scholar who published his own Greek-Latin edition of the work (Frankfurt am Main 1608).

Super-Chancery folio (313 x 210 mm). Greek type, with some Roman, 55 lines plus headline. collation: AA⁴ [ΒB]⁴ αa–vn⁸: 112 leaves. Principal text in two columns, three-, five-, and six-line initial spaces with guide letters. (Final seven leaves, αa– vn2–8, detached.)

binding: Eighteenth-century English brown calf (322 x 208 mm), covers with central single gilt-fillet frame with tint floral tools at corners, gilt edges. (Rebacked, endpapers lost [front] or detached [rear], extremities rather worn, especially corners.)

provenance: Marginalia (some cropped), possibly by Wolfgang Seber. acquisition: Purchased from Bernard M. Rosenthal, New York, 1969. references: UCLA 54; Adams P1787; Aldo Manuzio tipografo 57; Edit16 36138; Renouard 32/1; USTC 850213