Sometime under Augustus and Tiberius, a Roman poet named Marcus Manilius did an improbable thing: he wrote a textbook of astrology in hexameter verse, five books of it, the oldest comprehensive manual of the art to survive from antiquity. Hardly anyone in the ancient world so much as mentions him. The poem came down through a handful of manuscripts, and the Renaissance received it as the fullest account of ancient astrology in the ancient world's own words.
The man who made Manilius legible was Joseph Scaliger, the most formidable scholar of his age. He rebuilt the battered text from the old codex of Gembloux, and his notes explain, as the title page says, the author's ancient astrology. He prepared a third edition with his own hand and did not live to see it printed. This is that edition, brought out at Strasbourg in 1655 from Scaliger's own working copy, which reached the public, the title page admits, "after long delays and hiding-places." The editor Boecler added the observations of Reinesius and of the astronomer Boulliau.
The book is a handsome piece of scholarly printing with the whole seventeenth-century toolkit in it: Greek on nearly every page of the notes, the old Arabic star-names set in Arabic type, and woodcut diagrams throughout, at least eighteen of them. Here are the twelve houses of the horoscope under their Greek names, the antiscia wheels of Ptolemy and of Manilius, the tables of trigons and tetragons, and a run of full-page specimen nativities in which one and the same birth chart is cast by the method of the Indians, of Campanus, of Regiomontanus, and by the twelve athla of Manilius himself in turn. The chart is for a subject born in the year 1540, at the forty-fourth degree of latitude, with the sun at 21 degrees 49 minutes of Leo. The example is Scaliger’s own nativity, a feature noted by Anthony Grafton in his study of the scholar (Joseph Scaliger, volume I, 1983, p. 194). An engraved allegorical title by Franz Brunn opens the volume, two astronomers enthroned on clouds beside a celestial globe, Urania below with her armillary sphere, Mercury presiding with his caduceus.
The binding is contemporary vellum, the fore-edges finished in generous yapp flaps, the spine titled in ink in an old hand, "Manilii Astronomicon." Two blanks open the volume and four close it. An early owner wrote his name boldly across the printed title, "Johan: Pontanus," and a later collector added his armorial bookplate inside the front board. The engraved title is coming a little detached, the printed title shows some pulling at the gutter, and there is browning, foxing and spotting throughout, in places heavy. The vellum is clean and sound: a working scholar's copy, still in its first coat.
Provenance: Early ink ownership inscription "Johan: Pontanus" written large across the printed title; early ink shelf marks "N. 29." and initials "E.M.H." with twentieth-century armorial bookplate to the front pastedown.
Marci Manilii Astronomicon, edited by Joseph Scaliger, with his Castigationes et Notae printed for the first time from the copy he had prepared in his own hand for a third edition. Strasbourg, 1655, with the engraved allegorical title and Scaliger's own nativity among the diagrams. In contemporary vellum with yapp edges.
MANILIUS, Marcus (fl. 1st century AD). Astronomicon, "a Josepho Scaligero ex vetusto codice Gemblacensi infinitis mendis repurgatum," with Joseph Scaliger's Castigationes et Notae, now first printed from the copy prepared in his own hand for the third edition, ed. Johann Heinrich Boecler; with the animadversions of Thomas Reinesius and Ismaël Boulliau. Two parts in one volume. Strasbourg (Argentorati): at the expense of Johann Joachim Bockenhoffer, 1655; the engraved title dated 1654.
Physical Description: 4to. Engraved allegorical title by Franz Brunn after J. J. Ziegler; printed title in red and black with woodcut "Scientia Immutabilis" device; the Astronomicon in five books, 131 pp., with 5 pp. of index; divisional title and 8 preliminary leaves to Scaliger's Castigationes et Notae, which conclude at p. 462 with FINIS; final blank. At least 18 woodcut diagrams and tables in the text, several full-page. Two opening blanks and four further terminal blanks present.
Binding: Contemporary vellum with yapp fore-edges, spine titled in ink in an early hand "Manilii Astronomicon." Clean and sound, light soiling and a few small stains.
Condition: Engraved title partly detached; some pulling to the printed title leaf at the gutter; browning, foxing and spotting throughout, in places heavy. Text and diagrams entirely legible; the vellum sound.
Sometime under Augustus and Tiberius, a Roman poet named Marcus Manilius did an improbable thing: he wrote a textbook of astrology in hexameter verse, five books of it, the oldest comprehensive manual of the art to survive from antiquity. Hardly anyone in the ancient world so much as mentions him. The poem came down through a handful of manuscripts, and the Renaissance received it as the fullest account of ancient astrology in the ancient world's own words.
The man who made Manilius legible was Joseph Scaliger, the most formidable scholar of his age. He rebuilt the battered text from the old codex of Gembloux, and his notes explain, as the title page says, the author's ancient astrology. He prepared a third edition with his own hand and did not live to see it printed. This is that edition, brought out at Strasbourg in 1655 from Scaliger's own working copy, which reached the public, the title page admits, "after long delays and hiding-places." The editor Boecler added the observations of Reinesius and of the astronomer Boulliau.
The book is a handsome piece of scholarly printing with the whole seventeenth-century toolkit in it: Greek on nearly every page of the notes, the old Arabic star-names set in Arabic type, and woodcut diagrams throughout, at least eighteen of them. Here are the twelve houses of the horoscope under their Greek names, the antiscia wheels of Ptolemy and of Manilius, the tables of trigons and tetragons, and a run of full-page specimen nativities in which one and the same birth chart is cast by the method of the Indians, of Campanus, of Regiomontanus, and by the twelve athla of Manilius himself in turn. The chart is for a subject born in the year 1540, at the forty-fourth degree of latitude, with the sun at 21 degrees 49 minutes of Leo. The example is Scaliger’s own nativity, a feature noted by Anthony Grafton in his study of the scholar (Joseph Scaliger, volume I, 1983, p. 194). An engraved allegorical title by Franz Brunn opens the volume, two astronomers enthroned on clouds beside a celestial globe, Urania below with her armillary sphere, Mercury presiding with his caduceus.
The binding is contemporary vellum, the fore-edges finished in generous yapp flaps, the spine titled in ink in an old hand, "Manilii Astronomicon." Two blanks open the volume and four close it. An early owner wrote his name boldly across the printed title, "Johan: Pontanus," and a later collector added his armorial bookplate inside the front board. The engraved title is coming a little detached, the printed title shows some pulling at the gutter, and there is browning, foxing and spotting throughout, in places heavy. The vellum is clean and sound: a working scholar's copy, still in its first coat.
Provenance: Early ink ownership inscription "Johan: Pontanus" written large across the printed title; early ink shelf marks "N. 29." and initials "E.M.H." with twentieth-century armorial bookplate to the front pastedown.
Marci Manilii Astronomicon, edited by Joseph Scaliger, with his Castigationes et Notae printed for the first time from the copy he had prepared in his own hand for a third edition. Strasbourg, 1655, with the engraved allegorical title and Scaliger's own nativity among the diagrams. In contemporary vellum with yapp edges.
MANILIUS, Marcus (fl. 1st century AD). Astronomicon, "a Josepho Scaligero ex vetusto codice Gemblacensi infinitis mendis repurgatum," with Joseph Scaliger's Castigationes et Notae, now first printed from the copy prepared in his own hand for the third edition, ed. Johann Heinrich Boecler; with the animadversions of Thomas Reinesius and Ismaël Boulliau. Two parts in one volume. Strasbourg (Argentorati): at the expense of Johann Joachim Bockenhoffer, 1655; the engraved title dated 1654.
Physical Description: 4to. Engraved allegorical title by Franz Brunn after J. J. Ziegler; printed title in red and black with woodcut "Scientia Immutabilis" device; the Astronomicon in five books, 131 pp., with 5 pp. of index; divisional title and 8 preliminary leaves to Scaliger's Castigationes et Notae, which conclude at p. 462 with FINIS; final blank. At least 18 woodcut diagrams and tables in the text, several full-page. Two opening blanks and four further terminal blanks present.
Binding: Contemporary vellum with yapp fore-edges, spine titled in ink in an early hand "Manilii Astronomicon." Clean and sound, light soiling and a few small stains.
Condition: Engraved title partly detached; some pulling to the printed title leaf at the gutter; browning, foxing and spotting throughout, in places heavy. Text and diagrams entirely legible; the vellum sound.
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