#Book03
1497
[90] l. 29,2x20,5 cm. Modern fill-leather with title and author gilt on the spine. Raised bands. Complete. Restoration of the lower margins of the first dozen leaves (paper strengthened, text not affected). Good wide margins, clean block. Half-faded period owner’s inscription at the end of the preface, occasional marginalia in the same hand.
Brescian incunable containing the Iliad in Latin, translated in prose by Lorenzo Valla. This version, commissioned by Duke of Bisceglie and Prince of Salerno Alfonso of Aragon, was composed around 1473 and printed for the first time in Brescia in 1474.
The Latin text enjoyed considerable success (it can be found in the libraries of the greatest humanists of the time, with dense annotations) and decreed a wide diffusion of knowledge of the Iliad throughout Europe for the following decades. Valla was a Humanist writer and Hellenist who translated the work of several other important Greek authors into Latin, including Herodotus and Thucydides.
"The work of greatest editorial importance printed by Battista Farfengo was the Latin translation of the Iliad dated 6 September 1497, published at the request of Francesco Laurino, a citizen of Brescia, probably a bookseller who had already commissioned him in 1495 to print three other editions." (Paolo Veneziani, Typography in Brescia in the 15th century, 199 and pp. 96-97).
H 8775. GW 12898. IGI 4801. BMC VII, 986. Goff H-312.
