Caii Plinii Caecilii Secundi Opera quae supersunt omnia. Ad fidem optimarum editionum diligenter expressa. (Liber I-X: ex recensione Cortii et Longolii. Panegyricus Nervae Trajano Augusto dictus, ex editione T. Hearne)

12mo. 3 volumes in 2: (IV),1-275,(1 blank); (IV),277-633(1 blank),(23 p. index),(1 blank) p. Vellum 13 cm (Ref: Gaskell no. 208+ (p. 163), and especially no. 208 (p. 419); ESTC Citation No. T190303; Schweiger 2,807: ‘Sehr saubrer Abdruck des Textes der Briefe nach Corte und Longolius und des Panegyricus nach Th. Hearne’; Graesse 5,346; Ebert 17358; cf. Dibdin 2,331 & 332; cf. Moss 2,495) (Details: 2 thongs laced through the joints. Short title in ink on the back) (Condition: Vellum slightly soiled and scratched. Some foxing. Paper yellowing) (Note: The Roman civilian administrator Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, 61-112 A.D, published 9 books of literary letters, consisting of short essays, character sketches and sensible observations. The letters paint the high society of the young Roman empire. The tenth book contains Pliny’s correspondence with the emperor Trajan. Pliny is famous for his description of the eruption of the Vesuvius on the 24th of August in 79 A.D. He was a nephew of the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, who died, observing the eruption from afar, overcome by poisonous fumes. Pliny the Younger held under Trajanus a number of magistracies. In 111 or 112 he became governor of Bithynia. From here he was in constant correspondence with the Emperor. His letters, which were conceived of as artistic productions, are more or less epistolary essays. In the late antiquity and later in the Renaissance the literary letter had a widespread influence. § The Scottish printers Robert and Andrew Foulis chose for this edition of Pliny’s 247 letters the best available text at the time. It was produced by the German classical scholar Gottlieb Cortius, or Kortte, 1698-1731, who made his name producing editions of Latin authors, and whose works were provided with very extensive commentaries, in the manner of the Dutch scholar Petrus Burmannus. His very critical and elaborate Plinus Minor edition was published in Amsterdam in 1734. Cortius died before he could finish the job. Most publishing work was done by a pupil of his, the young German philologist Paul Daniel Longolius, 1704-1779. He added also emendations of his own. Longolius published 3 ancient authors in an exemplary manner, these Letters of Pliny the Younger, and also Diogenes Laertius (1739), and Gellius (1741). (ADB 19,156/7) His Plinius edition is called by Ernesti the editio optima (Ernesti/Fabricius Bibliotheca Latina, 2,416) For the Panegyricus Foulis used the edition of Pliny the Younger which was produced by the English scholar Thomas Hearne, 1678-1735, and which dates from 1703 (Oxford). It is called by Dibdin a ‘very respectable edition’. § Thousands of panegyrics must have been delivered in antiquity. Only a few of them survive. A panegyric is an elaborate eulogy, a formal set-piece oration in praise of an emperors or a high dignitary and was an integral part of the ceremony of politics in the Roman empire. The most influential panegyric speech was delivered in 100 A.D. by Plinius Minor before Trajan and the Senate in Rome, in which he thanks the emperor for his election to the consulship. It served as a model of rhetoricians in late antiquity. ‘It went on to teach many Renaissance and Baroque ceremonial orators how to address supreme political authorities in public speeches. (The Classical Tradition, Cambr. Mass. 2010, p. 745). His most famous imitator in the Renaissance was Erasmus. By the 18th century the panegyric was treated with suspicion, for it easily slid from a showpiece of praise to mindless flattery. ‘For Enlightenment critics panegyrics were not to be seen as part of a vital political culture; rather, they were a sure index of the constriction of personal liberty and the inevitable bankruptcy of language under autocracy’. (The Classical Tradition, Cambr. Mass., 2010, p. 684) In the 35 years between 1742 and 1776 the learned Foulis brothers, who were University Printers to the University of Glasgow, produced ca. 590 titles. Circa 100 of them are Greek or Latin editions. The Foulises printed textbooks for the University, but also works of learning, and general literature. From their presses have come some of the finest specimens of accurate and elegant printing that was produced in the eighteenth century. They once hung up the sheets of an Horace edition (1744) which was being printed, in the college of Glasgow, and offered a reward to those who could discover an inaccuracy. It seems that this Pliny edition was originally planned in two volumes. On the verso of the titles of volume 1 and 2 one reads: ‘Epistolarum libri sex priores’ and ‘Epistolarum libri quatuor posteriores. Panegyricus Nervae Trajano Augusto dictus’. However, at the bottom of page 503, the first page of the Panegyricus, is printed ‘Vol. III’. It was probably intended later on that the Panegyricus should comprise the third volume, ‘but no copy has been seen with a separately-bound vol. III, nor one with a Vol. III title page’. (Gaskell p. 164) The Panegyricus is, instead of a title, preceded by 2 leaves which only announce the Panegyricus, and donot have an imprint. The Foulises produced in this same year also a quarto edition of the Letters of Pliny. (Gaskell 207)) (Collation: Vol. 1: pi2, A-L12; M6. Vol. 2: pi2, N-X12, Y6 (minus blank leaf Y6); pi2 (leaf pi1 half-title, pi2 volume title), Z-2D12, 2E6, 2F12 (leaf 2F12 verso blank)) (Photographs on request)