Justus Lipsius - PUBLIO CORNELIO TACITO - 1623

The book is a Tacitus edition edited on the basis of Giusto Lipsius’ text, printed in Amsterdam in 1623. To C. Corn. Tacitus, ex recensione I. Lipsij: this title and this date are documented in the catalog of the Tadini Academy.

Coated in an old rigid parchment binding with manuscript title on the spine. Inner pages slightly oxidized but still fresh, with no wormholes, gore, or humidity stains.

[525]. 14 p

This is a Tacitus edition based on Lipsius’s philological revision. The formula ex recensione indicates that the Latin text follows the scholar’s process of checking and correcting. Lipsius had published his foundational edition of Tacitus as early as 1574; the 1623 edition thus belongs to the subsequent dissemination of his text.

The main Tacitean works are:

* Annals: the history of the emperors from Tiberius to Nero.
* Histories: the civil wars of 69 and the Flavian dynasty; only part of the work survives.
* Germania: the lands, peoples, and customs of the Germans.
* Agricola: the life of Tacitus’s father-in-law, the protagonist of the Roman conquest of Britain.

The volume testifies to the early Seicento interest in Tacitus as an author to study in order to understand power, court intrigues, and the relationships between rulers and subjects: the cultural current known as tacitism.

The author

Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who lived roughly between 55 and 120 A.D., was a Roman historian, senator, and orator. He became praetor in 88, consul in 97, and later proconsul of Asia. His writing is celebrated for its conciseness and for the psychological analysis of characters, especially the emperors and the people involved in power struggles.

Giusto Lipsius, the editor

Justus Lipsius, 1547–1606, was a Flemish humanist and one of the leading scholars of Latin texts of his time. He worked especially on Tacitus and Seneca, from which he drew also insights for his own reflections on political prudence and morality.

In your photograph the figure with helmet, spear, and shield is probably Minerva, symbol of wisdom and of military arts. Color traces are also visible, but from the photo alone it is not possible to date them.

To definitively confirm the identification and to reconstruct the collation of your copy, a clearer photo of the shield and one of the last numbered page are needed.