1535 Pindar

Pindar (518-438 BC); Lonicer, Johannes (c. 1497/1499–1569).
Poetae Vetustissimi, Lyricorum Facile Principis, Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia.
Basil: Andream Cratandrum, 1535.
Large Octavo.

One of the best-preserved lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar’s surviving works provide one of the principal literary insights into the religious, athletic, and aristocratic culture of the classical Greek world. This edition contains his celebrated Epinician Odes celebrating victors at the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian Games.

This copy was translated by the Lutheran theologian, humanist, and classical scholar Johannes Lonicer, making it an example of the Protestant humanist movement’s return ad fontes, in which the study of Greek and other classical languages profoundly influenced intellectual life far beyond theology. Particularly interesting is the fact that this copy later belonged to one or more Jesuit institutions, demonstrating that Catholic scholars continued to value the philological scholarship of leading Protestant humanists and incorporated such editions into their own libraries.

This copy is further distinguished by the survival of c. fourteenth-century vellum manuscript binder’s waste, rubricated in red and blue. The frequent rubrication appears to mark divisions within the text, suggesting production for an institutional or scholastic environment. The surviving fragments contain a theological text referring, among other figures, to John the Baptist, Mary, Herod, and the Apostles, indicating that the parent manuscript was most probably a biblical or scholastic commentary.