TERENCE

A good, clean copy of this much-praised edition of Terence s comedies by the renowned humanist Marc-Antoine Muret. It is the most estimable as it is of very neat execution, and because the new Scholia, added as a supplement to the Aldine of 1570, are here put in place (Renouard 219:13). Publius Terentius Afer (195/185-c.159BC), of Berber origins, was acquired as a slave by a Roman senator, educated in Rome and later freed thanks to his skills. His six comedies survived the medieval period in hundreds of manuscripts; they were widely used to teach Latin well into the C16, and they provided the model for the earliest comoediae sacrae , a new genre inspired by the Reformation. In 1570, Paulus Manutius had commissioned new scholia from the Neo-Latin poet and classicist Muret (1526-85), adding them as an appendix to the Terentian text. This edition includes a life of Terence, critical preliminary material based on the writings of Aelius Donatus, and Muret s scholia , with very few revisions to the previously-printed text. The young Aldus had even suggested the addition of a woodcut portrait of Terence from a book at the Vatican Library; the ever-critical Muret replied that he should focus on serious and important things: good paper, good typeface and, most of all, accurate revisions (Dejob, Marc-Antoine Muret , 483-85).

In 1581, an early owner noted down lines from the plays on this copy; later, it was in the possession of Marie Louis Henri d Escorches de Sainte-Croix (1749-1830), officer, minister and French diplomat at Constantinople.