Plinio il Giovane - Epistolarum - 1599

PLINY, TRAJAN AND THE SHADOW OF CAESAR: A RELIC OF RELIGIOUS WARS
Fascinating and authentic sixteenth-century edition of Pliny the Younger’s Epistulae, enriched by the famous philological notes of Isaac Casaubon, one of the greatest humanists and textual critics of modern Europe. The volume, small in format and intensely lived, preserves an extraordinary material aura: an era-bound plain parchment binding, worn by use and time, with frayed margins, chewed papers, and an impressive patina that gives the concrete image of the book as a daily object of study, travel, and survival. The presence of the Panegyrici, the letters between Pliny and Trajan, and Claudian’s texts makes the work a small compendium of Latin imperial rhetoric, read and annotated in the full heyday of European Protestant erudition. An apparently modest volume but of strong historical and bibliographical allure, almost a philological wreckage from the age of confessional wars and the great humanistic workshops.
MARKET VALUE
Seventeenth-century editions of Pliny the Younger with Casaubon’s notes, especially in an era-bound binding and in a genuinely unrestored state, maintain a stable market among collectors of classical philology and humanist books. Copies similar, complete but with evident signs of use, generally range between 400 and 600 euros. Whole, genuinely original specimens, with era parchment not redone and strong material character, are today more sought after than copies that have been excessively restored.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Era-bound in full limp parchment over raised bands, used, with deformations, losses and tears to the boards, spine worn from use and visible stitching. Typographical title page with a woodcut publisher’s mark; text in roman type and italics with running heads, woodcut initials and marginal postils impressed. Pages with some browning and physiological foxing, halos, creases, frayed margins. In old books, with a multiyear history, a few imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description. Pp. 414; (2); 448; 28.

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
C. Plinii Caec. Sec. Epist. Lib. IX.
S.L. 1599.
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secondus.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
The Epistles of Pliny the Younger constitute one of the most extraordinary testimonies of Roman imperial society in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE: politics, aristocratic friendship, forensic practice, provincial administration, and the construction of personal memory intertwine in an elegant and calibrated prose that became the absolute model for European humanism. The famous correspondence with Trajan is a fundamental document on the administration of the Empire and on the first official perception of Christians by Roman authority. This edition gains additional importance for the presence of Isaac Casaubon’s notes, a central figure of Protestant philology between the 16th and 17th centuries. Casaubon applied to classical texts a rigorous and almost “scientific” comparative method, based on systematic manuscript comparison and linguistic analysis. His annotations on Pliny represent one of the high moments of pre-Enlightenment textual criticism. The addition of the Latin Panegyrici and Claudian’s texts transforms the volume into a repository of late Latin imperial rhetoric: celebration of power, political propaganda, construction of the emperor’s public image, and the ideal continuity of Roman authority. The book thus becomes not only a scholastic classic but a true laboratory of European political memory.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, known as Pliny the Younger, was born around 61 CE and likely died around 113 CE. A lawyer, senator, governor of Bithynia under Trajan, and a refined littérateur, he was the nephew of Pliny the Elder. His Epistulae represent one of the most precious sources on the cultural and political life of the Flavian and Trajanic age. His prose, clear and elegant, deeply influenced Renaissance and modern epistolary literature.

BIOGRAPHY OF ISAAC CASAUBON
Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), French philologist and humanist of Huguenot origin, was among the greatest European scholars of his time. Active in Geneva, Paris and London, he collaborated with rulers and Protestant scholarly circles and developed a critical methodology aimed at transforming the study of classics. His annotated editions of Athenæus, Persius, Suetonius and Pliny became models of philological rigor for all of 17th-century Europe.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The editions of Pliny with Casaubon enjoyed widespread diffusion in the European scholarly world from the late 16th to the 17th century, especially in Protestant university contexts of French, Swiss, and German areas. The small formats, easily portable and intended for continuous study, were frequently used to the point of material exhaustion, a circumstance that makes today’s copies in completely original and unrestored condition relatively rare. The strongly lived appearance of this specimen precisely attests to that long history of daily reading and consultation that constitutes one of the most fascinating elements of its material authenticity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
Adams, P-1570 / P-1572 (editions related to Pliny with Casaubon).
Brunet, Manuel du Libraire, IV, col. 706-709.
Graesse, Trésor de Livres Rares, V, p. 325.
Renouard, Annales de l’imprimerie des Estienne, passim.
Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought, Oxford, 1996.
Reynolds & Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, Oxford University Press.
Cataloghi ICCU / OPAC SBN: sixteenth–seventeenth-century editions of Pliny with Casaubon apparatus.
USTC – Universal Short Title Catalogue, records relating to Casaubon’s annotated editions of Pliny.
WorldCat, European editions of Pliny the Younger with Panegyrici and philological notes.