Salluste ; Agostino Ortica della Porta (trad.) - Sallustio historico eloquentissimo (Catilina et Jugurtha en italien) - Venise, Sessa - 1531

SALLUST. Sallust, a most eloquent historian, with some other fine pieces, from Latin into the vernacular for Agostino Ortica della Porta genovese, translated. New edition, revised, and printed. [At the end :] Printed in Venice for Marchio Sessa in the year of Our Lord M.D.XXXI.

Petit in-8 of 136 ff. (signatures A-R, “all gatherings”), 10 x 14.5 cm.

Venetian edition of the Italian translation of Sallust by the Genoese Agostino Ortica della Porta, one of the first vernacular versions of the Latin historian: The Conspiracy of Catiline and The War with Jugurtha, with the speeches and letters that accompany them (Catiline’s letter to Quintus Catulus) and, at the end of the volume, a life of Sallust. Published by Marchio Sessa, one of the great popular publishers of Renaissance Venice, in the small format that made his classical works in the vernacular popular.

TITLE IN A BEAUTIFUL WOOD-ENGRAVED FRAME with scrolls, animals and putti; italic type; large typographic mark of a cat holding a mouse in its mouth, crowned and with the initials M S, on the verso of the last leaf; common titles “Congiuratione di Catilina”, “Delle conditioni di Giugurta…”.

Provenance: old ink stamp (serrated circle, initials) on the title.

Binding: full flexible parchment vellum, smooth spine.

Condition: good; vellum slightly stained and warped, small marginal losses on a few leaves, light foxing.