1690 Rare Latin Vellum Book - Lucii Annaei Senecae Cordubensis Tragoediae

An appealing seventeenth-century sammelband bringing together Seneca’s tragedies and two important works on Latin style and usage, preserved in its contemporary vellum binding and illustrated with engraved portraits and title pages.

Author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca; Adriano Castellesi (Hadrianus Cardinalis); Caspar Schoppe (Gaspar Scioppius). Seneca’s text revised and edited by Friedrich Redtel.
Title: Lucii Annaei Senecae Cordubensis Tragoediae; bound with Hadrianus Cardinalis, Libellus de Elegantia Latini Sermonis; and Gasparis Schoppii, Observationes Linguae Latinae.
Publisher: Stettin: Johann-Adam Plener, printed by Höpfner, 1690; together with Nuremberg: Georg Scheurer, 1681.
Edition: First Redtel edition of Seneca’s Tragoediae. Three seventeenth-century works bound together in one contemporary volume.
Language: Text in Latin.
Pages: 422 pages; 471 pages plus index; 133 pages plus index, separately paginated.
Size: 5.5 x 3.5 inches.
Binding: Very good contemporary full vellum binding, with the original sewing structure and supports visible along the spine. The vellum shows the attractive patina expected of a volume more than three centuries old, with overall toning, rubbing, staining and occasional small marks, as shown. Corners and extremities show age-related wear, but the binding remains firm and remarkably well preserved. Protected in a removable mylar cover. 
Content: Very good content, firmly bound and generally clean for its age, with expected age toning, occasional spotting and minor marks. Some early manuscript annotations are present. As frequently encountered in books of this period, the blank endpaper leaves are no longer present. The three works themselves are preserved together and separately paginated.
Illustrations: Illustrated with a fine engraved portrait of Seneca facing the first title page, a woodcut printer’s device, an engraved frontispiece depicting a scholar in his library, and an elaborate engraved pictorial title to the linguistic works, together with decorative woodcut initials, ornaments and typographical embellishments throughout.

Estimate: USD $350–400.

The book:
This fascinating seventeenth-century composite volume, or sammelband, brings together three Latin texts that would have appealed strongly to the educated reader of the period. The first is Seneca’s Tragoediae, published at Stettin in 1690 in an edition prepared by the German classical scholar Friedrich Redtel. The volume contains Seneca’s celebrated dramatic treatments of such figures as Hercules, Oedipus, Medea, Phaedra and Thyestes, works that exercised a profound influence upon Renaissance and early modern European drama.

Bound after Seneca are works devoted to the elegance and correct employment of Latin. Cardinal Adriano Castellesi’s treatise on Latin expression is followed by Caspar Schoppe’s Observationes Linguae Latinae. Together they make the volume particularly evocative of seventeenth-century humanist education, combining classical literature with the practical study of refined Latin. The contemporary vellum binding strongly suggests that the works were assembled for an early scholar or reader rather than united at a much later date.

The authors:
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, commonly known as Seneca the Younger, c. 4 BC–AD 65, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman and dramatist. Tutor and later adviser to the emperor Nero, he became one of antiquity’s most influential moral writers. His tragedies, composed in Latin and drawing upon Greek myth, became especially important during the Renaissance and helped shape the development of European tragic drama.

Adriano Castellesi, c. 1460–1521, was an Italian humanist, diplomat and cardinal whose writings included important works on Latin style and usage. Caspar Schoppe, 1576–1649, also known by the Latinized form Gaspar Scioppius, was a German classical scholar and controversialist noted for his philological writings and formidable knowledge of Latin. The Seneca edition was prepared by Friedrich Redtel, 1636–1705, a German educator, classical philologist and poet.