Sometime under the Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius, a poet named Marcus Manilius did an improbable thing: he wrote a textbook of astrology in hexameter verse, five books of it. Hardly anyone in the ancient world so much as mentions him. The poem reached Renaissance readers through a handful of manuscripts.
Joseph Scaliger brought formidable learning to Manilius’s difficult poem. 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: 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. The diagrams show the twelve houses, or divisions, of a horoscope and the relationships between points in the zodiac. In a sequence of full-page examples, the same birth chart is calculated four ways: by the Indian method, by Campanus and Regiomontanus, and by Manilius’s own twelve-part system. 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 birth chart. 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, with projecting vellum flaps at the fore-edges, 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.
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.
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 the Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius, a poet named Marcus Manilius did an improbable thing: he wrote a textbook of astrology in hexameter verse, five books of it. Hardly anyone in the ancient world so much as mentions him. The poem reached Renaissance readers through a handful of manuscripts.
Joseph Scaliger brought formidable learning to Manilius’s difficult poem. 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: 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. The diagrams show the twelve houses, or divisions, of a horoscope and the relationships between points in the zodiac. In a sequence of full-page examples, the same birth chart is calculated four ways: by the Indian method, by Campanus and Regiomontanus, and by Manilius’s own twelve-part system. 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 birth chart. 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, with projecting vellum flaps at the fore-edges, 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.
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.
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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