TITLE:  PTOLEMAEI PLANISPHAERIVM.  IORDANI PLANISPHAERIVM.  FEDERICI COMMANDINI VRBINATIS IN PTOLEMAEI PLANISPHAERIVM COMMENTARIVS.  In quo uniuersa Scenographices ratio quam breuissime traditur, ac demonstrationibus confirmatur. [Aldine anchor] VENETIIS, M.D.LVIII.

Quarto (not octavo, as described by Renouard). Part 1. 4 unnumbered preliminary leaves containing title and dedicatory preface of Commandino to Cardinal Rainuccio Farnese, 37 numbered leaves of text (1-25 Ptolemy, 26-37 Jordanus), final blank leaf with anchor on verso. Part 2. 28 numbered leaves of commentary, with separate title, anchor both on title and on verso of last leaf.  Text in roman, 25 lines to the page; commentary in italic, 34 lines to the page.  Many woodcut diagrams.  Both text and commentary are introduced by a seven-line woodcut initial belonging to a mythological series found in other books of Paulus of this period, C picturing Calypso bidding adieu to Ulysses, I, Juno seated on a car drawn by peacocks.  The original italic font of Aldus, the so-called Aldino type, which appears to have passed into the possession of the Torresani relatives at about this date, is here replaced by a new font having a perceptibly larger face, though only a slightly larger body (20 lines of the new equalling 21 of the old) and consequently showing less white between the lines.  Renouard, p. 173.

In 1554 the subscription assumed the new form apud Paulum Manutium Aldi F., showing that Paulus had acquired his brothers’ rights in the press.  At the same time he returned to the earlier and simpler form of the anchor with the name Aldus, instead of the Aldi filii and the ornamental border in use since 1546.  Sometimes, as in the present volume, the subscription is omitted altogether and the anchor with the name Aldus alone used.  Here moreover the place and date appear only on the title-page and the colophon is dropped as no longer useful.

The original Greek text of Ptolemy’s Planisphere is lost.  To the present Latin translation, made by an unknown hand from the Arabic, is appended (fol. 25) this subscription:  Facta est translatio haec Tolosae Cal.  Iunii Anno Domini MCXLIIII.  The revival of the study of the Greek mathematicians in the sixteenth century was largely due to the admirable translations and commentaries of Federigo Commandino of Urbino (1509-75).  This edition of Ptolemy’s Planisphere still remains the best.  In the same year Paulus printed Archimedis Opera nonnulla a Federico Commandino Vrbinate nuper in latinum conversa et commentariis illustrata.

Uncut copy, bound in blue morocco, with vellum fly-leaves.  Leaf 8-3/4 x 6-1/2 in.  From the Syston Park library with book-plate and monogram of Sir John Hayford Thorold.

34.  LIVIUS, TITUS.  Historiarum ab urbe condita libri.  Venetiis, in
    aedibus Manutianis, 1572.

TITLE:  T.LIVII PATAVINI, Historiarum ab urbe condita, LIBRI.  QVI.  EXSTANT XXXV CVM.  VNIVERSAE.  HISTORIAE.  EPITOMIS Caroli Sigonij Scholia, quibus ijdem libri, atque epitomae partim emendantur, partim etiam explanantur, Ab Auctore multis in partibus aucta. [Printer’s device] VENETIIS [Symbol:  Infinity] DLXXII.  In Aedibus Manutianis.