Historia Vitae Fortunaeque Aesopi, cum Fabulis Illius

Abstract

First, this little book has caused me as much anguish as any I have tried to win for the collection. For over three years I have been looking for it, thinking it lost. I presumed as a last hope that the book had got in with fable materials other than books and I hoped that I would find it, because I have sought it among my books many times over. I wondered if Serendipity had ever sent or given it to me, since I had to come up with a good deal of money to purchase it. I looked under the bed in my sister's guest room a year after purchasing it and then visiting there. Recently I had to clear some shelves in my room and came across this Historia book. That one word stands alone on the book's spine. It had been sitting on the shelf looking at me for three years. I presumed it was an old historical book someone had given me for some reason. Was I ever glad to be wrong! Though illustrations make many of the books in the collection very appealing, this book is one of the collection's special stars to me. The basic structure of this book includes a life of Aesop, Aesopic fables, Narrationes Aesopicae taken from various authors, and explication of Greek authors bearing on the fables. There is a letter to Rotingus dated 1539, alphabetical indices of characters and subjects in the sense of virtues and vices commented upon, and two pages of errata. I will excerpt here at length from Serendipity's description. Small octavo (14x9 cm), 19th-century 3/4 dark brown cloth, light brown pebbled cloth sides, marbled edges, plain endpapers. Six woodcut initials (white on black). Collation is Aa8, Bb4, A-Z8, a-m8, n3. ([xxi], 538, [xxviii]). Title continues: ... pluribus quingentis, & aliis quibusdam narrationibus, compositis studio & diligentia Ioachimi Camerarii Pab. Quibus additae fuere & Liuianae duae, et Gellianae ac aliorum aliquot. His accessit interpretatio Graecorum & aliorum etiam quorundum multo quam ante uberior. Et indices duo, ipsi quoque accuratius quam prius editi. In Latin, with some Greek. This copy, while in excellent condition, has been closely trimmed, in a few places affecting the running titles. Some old underlining and marginalia; signature of Thomas Rhodes (great grandfather of Cecil Rhodes??) on title page. We can find no records of an earlier edition of this exact title by the renowned humanist, naturalist and scholar; however, less extensive collections of Aesop's fables by Camerarius (with or without biographical information) appeared in 1538 and 1539 in Tubingen and Nuremburg, 1540 in Nuremburg, and 1542 in Tubingen and Antwerp. Bodemann (no.34.1) notes that the first illustrated edition (1565) is an expanded version of a 1538 text. Camerarius was a prolific scholar, and Aesop seems to have been a continuing interest for him. He held academic appointments in the Classics at Nuremburg, Tubingen, and, as of 1541, Leipzig. Earlier editions of Aesop printed in Leipzig are Dorpius (1515 and 1517) and a small book of aphorisms (1497). Scarce. Does the tally of more than 500 fables make this book more comprehensive than L'Estrange's?