Cicerone - [Post Incunable] Verrinae - 1515

Corruption trial: how to ruin a magistrate's career
Numerous hand-painted initials, several rubricated in red and blue and some illuminated in gold.
Gaius Verres was, in fact, a Roman magistrate — and it is precisely this that makes the case so explosive.
The case brought by Marcus Tullius Cicero therefore does not strike a marginal official, but a representative of the Roman state invested with imperium.
The Verrinae are built precisely on this paradox: those who should have administered justice are charged with extortion, systematic looting, racketeering and abuse of power, up to the desecration of temples and sacred goods.
From a rhetorical and political standpoint, Cicero performs a surgical operation: he does not prosecute Verres merely as an individual, but the entire system of corrupt provincial magistracies, showing how the abuse of imperium turns the magistrate into a tyrant.
This rare Florentine edition of 1515 of Cicero's Verrines testifies to the enduring fortune of Cicero's judicial oratory in the early Italian Renaissance. Printed by Filippo Giunti, the absolute protagonist of Florentine printing, the work restores one of the most celebrated cycles of oratory from antiquity: the invectives pronounced against Gaius Verres, an eternal paradigm of political corruption and abuse of power. In a handy yet scholarly format, intended for study and active reading, this volume reflects the humanistic use of Cicero as a linguistic, moral, and civil model, in a context where the classical word returns to being a tool of justice and of the formation of the ruling elite.
Market value
The sixteenth-century editions of Cicero's oratorical works, particularly those printed in Florence by the Giunti family, maintain a steady demand in the antiquarian market that sits between 2,000 and 4,000 euros. Complete copies, in antique bindings and with overall sound conditions, consistently fall within this range, with possible increases for copies that are particularly fresh, richly decorated, or with documented provenance.

Physical description and condition
Full leather binding, spine with a raised panel and gold tooling. Paper with some browning and reddening, physiological. Printer's mark at the end. Presence of brown ink marks in the text, attributable to reading and study of old times. The volume features numerous hand-painted initials, several rubricated in red and blue and some illuminated in gold, evidence of a personalization in a cultured milieu. In ancient books, with a history spanning centuries, there may be some imperfections, not always noted in the description. Pp. (2); 430; 2nn; (2).

Full title and author
Of M. Tullius Cicero Verrinus.
Florence, at Philippi Iuntae's, 1515.
Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Context and Significance
The Verrine Orations represent one of the absolute peaks of Latin forensic oratory: a systematic and relentless attack on the governor Verres, accused of plundering, extortion and sacrilegious violations in Sicily. Beyond the specific case, Cicero builds a universal model for denouncing misgovernment, based on a rhetoric that unites moral indignation, legal precision and narrative force. In the Renaissance, these speeches were read not only as stylistic exercises, but as politically timely texts capable of instructing magistrates, jurists and men of government. The Florentine Giunti press fully fits into this climate, presenting Cicero as a living and necessary author, while the handwritten decoration of the initials strengthens the dialogue between typographic culture and the humanistic book-tradition.

Biography of the Author
Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in Arpinum in 106 BC and died in 43 BC. He was an orator, philosopher, jurist and statesman, a leading figure of the late Roman Republic. Considered the supreme model of Latin prose, he exerted a decisive influence on rhetoric, on moral philosophy and on Western political theory, becoming a central author in medieval and Renaissance educational programs.

Printing history and circulation
Printed in Florence in 1515 by Filippo Giunti, this edition marks the peak of the Giunti workshop's maturity, renowned for its typographical quality and the systematic dissemination of Latin classics intended for humanist study. The Verrinae underwent numerous reprints throughout the 16th century, but the Italian editions from the early decades are less common today than contemporary Franco-German editions. The presence of the colophon on A7v paper confirms the completeness of the copy, while the painted initials indicate its circulation in cultured and likely academic circles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
EDIT16, CNCE: to be verified.
ICCU, OPAC SBN: report of the Florentine edition Giunti 1515 (data to be compared with the copy).
Renouard, A. A., Annales des Junte, Paris, 1834, pp. 98–101.
Gaskell, P., A New Introduction to Bibliography, Oxford, 1972, pp. 201–206 (for Italian humanistic production).
Reynolds, L. D., Texts and Transmission. A Survey of the Latin Classics, Oxford, 1983, pp. 107–112 (under Cicero).
Kristeller, P. O., Iter Italicum, London–Leiden, vol. I, pp. 112–114 (for the humanistic reception of Cicero).
Eisenstein, E. L., The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge, 1979, vol. I, pp. 289–295 (for the civil function of the classics press).