Louis Robert - Les gladiateurs dans l'Orient grec - 1940

Rarest first edition of the book published in 1940 in an extremely limited edition for which there are no modern commercial reissues.

The very few circulating copies originate, like this one, from deaccessioned academic funds.

The ex libris in the photo refers to the American School of Classical Studies (ASCS) — one of the most prestigious international academic institutions for the study of ancient Greece — of which the book's former owner was a member (the American historian and archaeologist Peter Bruce Cornwall, whose private library included the book).

There are 25 photographic plates laid out as inserts (out of the text).

Stored in good condition, it features a half-leather and marbled-card binding, solid and sturdy, with signs of abrasions and scratches on the boards and edges, and on the leather portion, defects noted in the photos.

Spread throughout the text are numerous underlinings and pencil marginalia, easily erasable.

At the junction of the first photographic plate, on the connecting page, there are some brown traces (also highlighted in the photo); otherwise the pages show no defects, tears, or missing parts.

The rarity of the volume on the market is real, and at the moment it is not for sale from any retailer or antiquarian bookseller, neither physical nor online, as monitored by Copilot.

The book presents two title pages, almost identical, and on the second there are traces of a stamp, probably placed by a library that previously owned the publication.