[ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE] - Lot 93

[ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE] Hoi tes heroikes poieseos Poetæ Græci Principes Heroici carminis & alii nonnulli [Includes Homer's Iliad, Odyssey and Homeric Hymns; Hesiod's Works and Day and Theogony; Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica; and many others]. [Geneva], Henri Estienne, Huldrich Fugger, 1566. Together bound in a large folio volume: 20pp, 781pp, LVII, 489pp. Printed in Greek (some passages in Latin). Some stained leaves. A few lines underlined in ink throughout. Printed bookplate to be identified. Fawn speckled calf in the spirit of the 17th century, spine ribbed, red title page, gilt fillets, one bit split, the second weak, cold fillets framing the boards, filleted edges, red edges. First edition of this work containing several fragments of the works of sixteen Greek poets, including Homer, Theocritus, Hesiod, Musæus, Bion, Moschus, Pythagoras, Nicander, Phaenomina by Aratus and Simias of Rhodes, including many rare texts. It contains the 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey', the 'Homeric Hymns', the 'Argonautics' attributed to Orpheus, the bucolic poems of Theocritus, the 'Phenomena' of Aratus, in other words, the essence of Greek epic and bucolic poetry. This work is recognized as one of Estienne's greatest scientific and typographical achievements (Brunet IV, 757).