Beschreibung:

PLATO (427-347 B.C.). Omnia opera , in Greek. Edited by Marcus Musurus (ca. 1470-1517). - Timaeus Locrus , in Greek [Hellenistic paraphrase of the Timaeus in Doric dialect]. - DIOGENES Laertius (1st half of the 3rd century A.D.). Vita Platonis , in Greek. Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andreas Torresanus, September 1513. Aldine 2 o (290 x 190 mm). Collation: s2(1+1 1 0) 2 4; a-z 8 aa-hh 8 ii 4; A-Z 8 AA-DD 8 EE 4 (r Greek and Latin title and printer's woodcut device [Fletcher f4], v blank, 1/1r-2v Aldus's dedicatory petition in Latin to Pope Leo X, 1/2v Latin table of contents, 1/3r-4v Musurus's Greek elegiac hymn to Plato, 1/5r-v Greek table of contents, 1/6r-2/3v [including ] Diogenes on Plato from the Lives and sentences of the philosophers , 2/4 blank; alr-ii3v Plato, ii4 blank; A1r-EE4r Plato [AA4r-7r Timaeus Locrus ], EE4r register and Greek and Latin colophons, EE4v printer's woodcut device [Fletcher f4]). 486 leaves (of 488, without the two blanks). Greek type 3bis:90 (texts, Musurus's poem), roman 12:90 (dedication and incidental). 48 lines and headline. (Minor browning and foxing, printing flaw to u4r due to creased paper, light reddish stain in lower blank margins of ee1v-2r, lower blank corner of C4 replaced, tiny filled and mostly marginal wormholes in first and last quires touching one or two letters on ca. 50 leaves.) 18th-century French crimson morocco gilt, spine tooled in six compartments, gilt edges; modern morocco-backed box. Provenance : Frequent corrections and emendations in the text with extensive Greek and some Latin marginalia in 16th-century hands (washed, occasionally cropped); deleted motto or signature, probably in Greek (inscription, title page); purchased for 61 drachmas (Greek inscription, title page); initials "R P C" and Greek "wlos inscribed on title page; Michael Wodhull (1740-1816), classical scholar and bibliophile, bought from Payne 1 May 1771 for 6/6/- (purchase and collation notes on flyleaf); Templeton Crocker (1884-1948), San Francisco collector of English literature, Californiana and Aldines (bookplate). EDITIO PRINCEPS of Plato's dialogues and all other texts. The works of Plato stand at the origin of the Western tradition of scientific inquiry as well as that of philosophical thought. Socrates, by his ceaseless and methodical questioning, reported in the dialogues, laid the foundation of the scientific method. Plato's own enthusiasm for mathematics and astronomy is evident in his works, and he was credited in Antiquity with having promoted the advance of geometry in particular. The Timaeus , which was available to the Latin Middle Ages in the 4th-century translation by Chalcidius, offered a cosmography, a theory of atomism, and a physiology that regarded the brain as the organ of consciousness. Marsilio Ficino's Latin translation of Plato's works was printed in Florence in 1484 and reprinted in Venice in 1491. One of the most ambitious works undertaken by the Aldine Press, the Greek edition of Plato was promised as early as 1497 and was being planned in 1506. The editor, Marcus Musurus, worked closely with Aldus Manutius and was responsible for many of the Greek texts published by the Aldine Press. For the Plato, "the transmitted text, though by no means perfect, was in a much better state than that of most authors, and therefore did not invite editorial intervention on the same scale. In the Laws Musurus is thought to have made few if any alterations to the text. Most unusually, it looks as if his source could have been one of Bessarion's manuscripts (Marc. gr. 187) ... A similar picture emerges from his work on the Republic . For the rest of the corpus it is to be presumed that he used another copy from Bessarion's library (Marc. gr. 186), occasionally taking readings from other copies (such as Paris gr. 1810) ... Here perhaps it is necessary to posit the existence of copies made from Bessarion's manuscripts before he donated them to Venice" (N.G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Ital