Senofonte - In Hoc Volumine Continentur Infrascripta Opera [...] Paedia Cyri Persarum Regis. De Venatione - 1502

Modern full Havana-coloured leather binding, spine with 3 raised bands; grey sprayed edges. 109 unnumbered sheets, including the cover page with the author’s name and the titles of Xenophon’s works included in the volume. Text in Latin, printed with elegant round letters and wide use of abbreviations; blank spaces with reference letters instead of the drop caps. On the back of the last sheet, at the bottom, colophon with indication of the printer, chronic and topical date of the edition on the left, woodcut typographic brand in the middle, register data on the right. Some Latin annotations, other always marginal marks and rare underlinings, all written in pen with coeval handwriting. The work is a rare and very valuable early 16th-century edition of six works by the Greek historian Xenophon, in a Latin translation from the Greek original. The most extensive work is the Ciropedia, narration of the education of Cyrus king of the Persians, in the version of Francesco Filelfo; followed by the hunting treatise De venatione, in the translation of Omnibonus Leonicenus, and other texts, including Socrates’ Apologia and the treatise Sulla Tirannide by the great humanist Leonardo Bruni, called Leonardo Aretino. The collection, printed in the famous university city of Bologna, is admired for the typographic elegance of Renaissance taste. In the cover page, in addition to the round lowercase lettering used in the other sheets, Gothic letters are used for the author's name and capital letters in the second and third lines. Graesse, who points to the Bolognese edition among the rarest and most curious of Xenophon's texts, incorrectly indicates 108 unnumbered sheets, rather than 109. The same scholar points out reproductions of the Lyon edition in 1505 circa and 1511. In good condition; an overall good text, contained browning on a few pages; few and small woodworm holes on the margins of the central sheets.