M. Val. Martialis epigrammata demptis obscenis. Addidit annotationes & interpretationem Josephus Juvencius, e Societate Jesu.

12mo. (X),685,(24 index) p. Vellum 15.5 cm (Ref: Schweiger 2,599 mentions only the first edition of 1693) (Details: 2 thongs laced through cover. Latin text followed by a commentary in 2 columns) (Condition: Binding soiled. Lower corner bumped. Title dust-soiled) (Note: The Roman epigrammist Martial, ca. 41-104 A.D., embraced in his 14 books of epigrams ‘many topics: flattery of social superiors, satire of man’s foibles, eroticism’. (The Classical Heritage, Cambr. Mass., 2010, p. 565/66). Contemporaries valued his work for its frankness and wit. Later Renaissance authors mined his work and sparked a resurgence of Neo-Latin and vernacular epigrams throughout Europe. § Martial’s obscenity created a dilemma for editors. Censors banned and expurgated the 151 pornographic epigrams, the so-called Obscoena, not wanting to hurt the taste of the civilized reader, or they simply hid them at the end of the text before the index, as happened e.g. in the edition for the young Dauphin. (Paris 1680) Voltaire did not appreciate Martialis, he chided him for his images grossières. § This school edition of Martial is the work of the French Jesuit scholar, poet and paedagogue Joseph de Jouvancy, or Jouvency, in Latin Josephus Juvencius, 1643-1719. Jouvancy entered the Society of Jesus when he was sixteen, ‘and after completing his studies he taught grammar at the college at Compiègne, and rhetoric at Caen and the College of La Flèche. He made his profession in the latter place in 1677 and was afterwards appointed professor at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in Paris. In 1699 he was called by his superiors to Rome to continue the history of the Society of Jesus begun by Niccolo Orlandini, and was engaged on this work until his death. (…) Jouvancy edited a large number of school editions of Latin authors, including Terence, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, Martial, the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the philosophical writings of Cicero, such as De Officiis, Cato Major and Laelius’. The texts were revised and purged for school use, and supplied with footnotes in Latin. ‘These expurgated editions were frequently reissued well into the 19th century, both in France and other countries’. (Source for Jouvancy Wikipedia)) (Collation: A – 2G12) (Photographs on request)