Q. Curtii Rufi Historia Alexandri Magni. Cum notis selectiss. Variorum, Raderi, Freinshemii, Loccenii, Blancardi, &c. Editio accuratissima, accurante C.S.M.D. (And:) J. Freinshemii Supplementorum in Q. Curtium liber I (& II).

8vo. 2 parts in 1: 751,(1); 93,(48),(1 blank) p., engraved title, 1 plate, 1 map. Overlapping vellum 19 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 095875646; Willems 1482; Berghman 2055; Rahir 1590; Schweiger 2,321; Moss 548; Dibdin 375: ’the edition of 1673 is the most correct and beautiful’; Graesse 2,311) (Details: 6 thongs laced through the joints. Engraved title, depicting a world conquering Alexander on horseback, trampling his enemy Darius; he is accompanied by a flying Fama, who blows her horn. A plate depicts the ‘fons solis’, a fountain in the Egyptian oasis of the temple of Ammon, cool at midday and warm at the rising and setting of the sun. Alexander visited this famous oracle in order to obtain an answer concerning the divinity of his origin. The map shows the triumphal march of Alexander through Egypt and Asia) (Condition: Good condition. Back soiled. A small unobjectionable wormhole in the gutter of the first half, not affecting text. Old & small paper label on the back) (Note: This is a typical Variorum edition. It offers a ’textus receptus’ which is widely accepted, accompanied with the commentary and the annotations of various specialists, taken, or excerpted from earlier useful, normative or renewing editions. Editions like these, ‘cum notis Variorum’, were useful, but never broke new ground. The production of these sometimes overloaded ‘dustbins’ of knowledge was the specialty of Dutch scholars of the 17th and 18th century. The compilers seldom were great scholars, but often hard working schoolmasters. Their involvement in publishing a new edition was limited to the necessary. In a Variorum edition of Claudianus published by the same Elzevier in 1665, we get a glimpse of such labour. There the ’typographus’, i.e. Louis and/or Daniel Elzevier, tells the reader that a ‘vir diligentissimus’ the schoolmaster Cornelius Schrevelius, excerpted from the best sources all that was necessary for a good understanding of the text. ‘Quod ad praestantissimi poetae intellectum pertineret, ex optimis Doctissimorum Virorum’, then follows a number of names of Claudianus editors and commentators, ‘aliorumque, qui antea in eo illustrando elaborarunt, notis & commentariis selectissima quaeque excerpsit’. This ‘Variorum’ edition of Curtius Rufus of 1673 was, as it happens, produced by the above mentioned Cornelis Schrevelius, 1608 – 1664, who took his doctoral degree in Paris as a Doctor of Medicine in 1627. Hence C.S.M.D. on the title, that is ‘Cornelis Schrevelius Medicus Doctor’. He was Rector of the Schola Latina at Leiden. § The Roman historian Quintus Curtius Rufus, probably first century A.D., is the author of the only surviving monography on Alexander the Great in Latin. He was an historian enough to use sources, which drew from different traditions, conscientiously. His aim was not to write great literature, but his ‘Historia’ certainly possesses great narrative qualities, acquired by a thorough knowledge of the epic and historiographic tradition, and a training in Roman rhetoric. (NP, s.v. Curtius) This work, consisting of 10 books, did not survive in its entirety, the first 2 books are lost. The text of Curtius Rufus is followed in this edition by a rather strange philological accomplishment by the German scholar Johannes Casper Freinsheim, 1608-1660. He endeavoured to repair the loss of the 2 books that did not survive by a composition of his own, a feat which was much admired by his contemporaries. He published this new text earlier in his edition of 1640. Moss declares that this supplemented text is ‘scarcely descernible from that of Q. Curtius’) (Provenance: The label on the back reads: ‘Litt Antiq. A.J. v. B.C.’ This must be Aarnoud Jan van Beeck Calkoen, 1805-1874, born in Leiden. He went to Utrecht to study law. There he settled as a lawyer, and grew into politics. (NNBW 9,123) (Collation: pi2, A-3A8; (map after gathering A; folding plate after leaf M4); a-h8, i4, k2 (leaf k2 verso blank)) ( Photographs on request)