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HOMER. [Works, in Greek.] Greek type, except for Latin dedication to Piero de' Medici printed in Roman. Initial spaces left blank. 250, 189 (of
HOMER. [Works, in Greek.] Greek type, except for Latin dedication to Piero de' Medici printed in Roman. Initial spaces left blank. 250, 189 (of 190) leaves; lacks final blank. 2 volumes. Folio, 302x196 mm, early 19th-century English navy straight-grain morocco, covers handsomely gilt with design of intersecting rectangle and lozenge surrounding onlaid morocco center panel with tooled crest, spines divided by double bands into 6 compartments, lettered in 3 with ornamental tooling in the rest, joints and raised bands rubbed, spines unobtrusively darkened to green, Volume 2 rear joint starting; scattered minor stains, few cropped early marginalia in Greek, Volume 1 with fingersoiling in lower outer corner of first page and small hole in blank lower inner corner ²A2, Volume 2 with repaired wormholes in blank inner margins of last several leaves, last leaf rehinged, otherwise an attractive set. Early 20th-century pencil collation note ("Perfect") of F. S. Ferguson at end of Volume 1. Florence: [Printer of Virgil (Copinger 6061), perhaps Bartolommeo di Libri, and] Demetrius Damilas for Bernardo and Nerio Nerli and Giovanni Acciaiuoli, 9 December 1488 [dedication printed 13 January 148 8/89 or shortly after]
- Notes: first edition of a cornerstone of the western literary tradition and a landmark of early greek printing, the collected works of Homer comprising the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Homeric Hymns, omitting only the mock epic Batrachomyomachia, which had been published circa 1474 in a Greek-Latin edition of which only one copy is known. The 1488 Homer was edited by the Athenian émigré scholar Demetrius Chalcondylas and printed with type recast from the font designed by the Cretan émigré scribe Demetrius Damilas for the 1476 Epitome of Constantine Lascaris, the first book printed entirely in Greek. Opinions are divided over the actual printing of this edition, which has been variously credited to Damilas, Bartolommeo di Libri, the Nerli brothers, or the eponymous Printer of [the 1487 Florence] Virgil (Copinger 6061). BMC VI, 678; Goff H300; Hoffmann II, 314-15; Printing and the Mind of Man 31; Sandys II, 64.
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