Agricola, Georgius | de mensuris, from the library of Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, Basel, 1533

Agricola, Georgius

Libri quinque de mensuris & ponderibus. Basel: (Hieronymus) Froben (and Nicolaus Episcopius, August), 1533

4to (202 x 142 mm). Roman and Greek types, with some italic, woodcut printer's device on title and last page, five 6- to 9-line historiated initials; title-page washed, very occasional light marginal staining. Eighteenth-century French red morocco, covers with triple gilt-fillet border, spine gilt in six compartments, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, blue silk ribbon marker; lightly rubbed. 

First edition of Agricola’s standard treatise on weights and measures, reprinted later the same year by Christian Wechel in Paris.

“The work can hardly be called an arithmetic, but, like a few others included in this list, it is a valuable book of reference on the history of ancient measures. … The book is also valuable to the student of Roman and Greek numerals, and of the various symbols of measures. Such works explain the origin of certain systems of measures employed before the metric system was developed, and of such symbols as are still used by apothecaries” (Smith, Rara Arithmetica, pp. 171–73, of the Paris edition, which he mistakenly considered the first).

REFERENCES

Adams A343; Agricola-Bibliographie 3.6.6.1.1; Hoover 13; Kress 38. Wellcome I:58

PROVENANCE

Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex (1773–1843), sixth son of George III and his queen consort, Charotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (armorial bookplate, with pressmark VII.D.c.1) — Charles W. G. Howard (armorial bookplate, stating “The Gift of the Rt. Hon. Sir David Dundas Knt. Of Ochtertyre," [1877])