Plinio il Vecchio - C. Plinii Secundi Historiæ Mvndi Libri (2 voll.) - 1561

Bindings in full stiff, solid, clean parchment. On the spine, gold tooling, title and author gilded in an orange box. Red edges.

1 vol.: 2 blank leaves, [18], 490, 2 blank leaves
90
23
2 vol.: 2 blank leaves, [1], 679, [129], 2 blank leaves

The work collects the 37 books of the classical encyclopedia on the natural world compiled by Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD), who was an administrator under Emperor Vespasian and a prolific author. His Historia is a masterful encyclopedia of natural sciences, both theoretical and practical, which describes in detail all that was known in these fields in the 1st century AD. Based on hundreds of Greek and Latin sources, clearly indicated in this edition, his ten-volume work introduces the reader to astronomical topics such as the nature of the Moon and its distance from the Earth; to pharmacopoeia, ointments, and herbal remedies; to natural phenomena, including stone rain; to world geography and to the ethnographic study of distant “gentes mirabiles”; to the description of all animal and plant species, wild and domestic; to horticulture, from cultivation to the treatment of mutations and diseases of plants; to metals and gold extraction; to mineralogy and pigments for painting.

Beautiful typographic marks at the frontispieces. Initial capitals, headers and endpieces. In the first volume: two ex libris on the flyleaf and one on the first blank leaf; small wormholes in the text (though only a few letters affected) throughout the volume; marginal gutter in the first half from about page 20. In the second volume: a few small holes in the text toward the end. Diffuse to light foxing and some browned pages. In general, copies in good conservation state, complete and usable.