HERODOTUS (fl. 5th century BC). Historiae, translated from Greek into Latin by Laurentius Valla, edited by Antonius Mancinellus. Venice: Johannes & Gregorius de Gregoriis, 8 March 1494 [actually not before 30 March 1494].
Median 2o (310 x 217 mm). Collation: A8 (A1r title: Herodoti Halicarnasei libri novem, A1v blank, A2r-8r index, A8v editor’s letter to Nicolaus Rubeus dated 29 March, 1494, three weeks later than the colophon); a-d8 e-x6 (a1r incipit with illustration and border, x6r colophon and sheet register, x6v blank). 142 leaves. Type 26:110R. 45 lines and headline. Woodcut illustration 78 x 113 mm, woodcut border 300 x 197 mm. Initial spaces with guide-letters. (Woodcut border slightly shaved at top, some pale marginal dampstaining at beginning and end, pale stain on several leaves in quires c and d, h2.5 and i3.4 browned.) 18th-century limp vellum, portions of ties preserved (some soiling). Provenance: marginalia throughout in an early hand (some cropped); acquired from Lathrop C. Harper, 1977.
This third edition, preceded by those of 1474 (Venice: Jacobus Rubeus) and 1475 (Rome: Arnoldus Pannartz), is celebrated for having one of the finest woodcut borders of the 15th century. The black-on-white border shows Renaissance ornament and two white-ground insets, the upper of a faun preparing to sacrifice a goat and the lower Hercules at the parting of the ways. It frames a larger cut of the crowning of Herodotus by Apollo and the incipit. Essling saw the hand of the Poliphili Master in these fluid cuts. HC *8472; BMC V, 345 (IB. 21058); Bod.-Inc. H-056; CIBN H-56; IGI 4694; Sander 3376; Essling 735; Hind p. 505; Goff H-90.