Cicerone - Le Orazioni Scelte di Marco Tullio Cicerone - 1821

The Chosen Orations of Marco Tullio Cicerone

translated into Italian and enriched with notes by Abate Placido Bordoni
Fifth edition with the addition of the Elogio dell’abate Gio. Luigi Bellomo
Venice, Andrea Santini e Figlio, Printers and Publishers, 1821

4 volumes bound together in 2 quarto volumes (approximately 20 × 12.5 cm for the binding).
Pages: XXXVI, 252; 280; 331; 288.

Contemporary full leather binding in brown, with smooth backs adorned by gold-ruled lines and chain of gilded ornaments, titles and numbering in gold (“BORDONI ORAZIONI SCELTE 1.2” and “5.4”), boards covered with blue and ochre marbled paper, speckled edges.
Overall good preservation, with the usual signs of use and slight wear to the headcaps and corners, typical of period copies; interiors generally fresh, with some foxing and marginal stains.

Complete work of the chosen orations of Marco Tullio Cicerone in the famous Italian version by the Venetian abbot Placido Bordoni (Venice 1736-1821), professor of ethics and logic, later of classical Latin literature and Greek philology at the Regio Liceo of Venice. This is the fifth edition, published in the year of the translator’s death, and enriched for the first time with the Elogio composed by Gio. Luigi Bellomo, Bordoni’s colleague at the same Liceo.

The text offers the Italian translation of the orations alongside (or footnoted with) the original Latin and an extensive apparatus of historical-philological, rhetorical, and linguistic notes. In his preface Bordoni explains the adopted translation method, inspired by Cicero himself and distant from earlier versions, with the aim of making the grandeur of Cicero’s eloquence accessible to Italian students and scholars. Among the speeches included:
• Oration in defense of Publius Quinctius
• Oration in defense of Sextus Roscius of Ameria
• Divinatio in Q. Caecilium and Actio prima in Verrem
• Oration to the People and Oration to the Senate given after the return from exile
• Oration in defense of one’s own house (De domo sua)
• Oration in defense of Gnaeus Plancius
• Oration against Lucius Calpurnius Piso
• Various Philippics against Marcus Antonius

This translation constitutes one of the most significant Italian contributions to the exegesis and diffusion of Cicero’s orations from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. Bordoni, a prominent figure in post-republic Venetian culture, combines philological rigor with pedagogical aims, making the work particularly appreciated in schools and private libraries of the era.

The 1821 edition, complete in four volumes and in original period binding, is today sought after by Latin classics collectors as well as by enthusiasts of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Venetian bibliography.

Complete and well-preserved copies in their original editorial appearance are not common on the antiquarian market.

A copy of certainly scholarly interest, suitable for libraries of the classics, for scholars of ancient rhetoric, and for enthusiasts of nineteenth-century Venetian typography.