First combined edition of Symmachus's letters together with Mehmed II's fictitious letters 19

Quintus Aurelius Symmachus

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• A proposito di opere d'arte
  Epistolae familiares.
  Including: ZACCHIA, Laudivius. … in epistolas Turci magni traductio.
  (Colophon: Strassburg, Johann Schott for Georg Übelin, 8 August 1510). 4to. 19th-century half calf, tiger marbled sides, tiger marbled paste-downs (rebacked, with original backstrip laid down).
  
  First dated edition of Epistolae familiares containing 343 letters by the Roman statesman and orator Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (ca. 345-402), addressed to a wide circle of relations, friends, and acquaintances and all written in a refined style. Although many of them are only short notes, together they provide a fascinating window into the late Roman senatorial aristocracy. The priority of the editions is uncertain, but what is often considered the first was published in Venice between 1503 and 1513.
  The main text is followed by a spurious collection of letters from and to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (1432-1481), but actually written by the humanist Laudivius Zacchia. "The so-called Epistolae magni Turci begin with a letter from Mehmed … to Zancassanus, 'King of Persia'. As in the rest of the collection, the exchange follows a set pattern: angry, menacing boasts from the sultan, followed by a reply from the threatened party, which parries the worst of the bluster and thus rhetorically disarms the Turk" (Meserve). The book, first published in 1473, was a success and reprinted numerous times well into the 17th-century, undoubtedly because many Europeans feared the advancing Ottoman Empire (the Battle of Mohács was to give the Ottomans a decisive victory in Hungray in 1526).
  The present edition is the first combined edition of the two works. Another edition including both works was published only two months later by another Strassburg publisher Johann Grüninger on 9 October 1510. A line for line reprint of the present edition was published in 1511.
  With some underscoring and a few annotations in the margins. Paper slightly browned with a few occasional spots. Binding rebacked. Good copy.
  Brunet V, col. 612; Graesse VI, p. 538; VD 16, S10390 (8 copies); cf. Meserve, Empires of Islam in Renaissance historical thought (2009), p. 228; not in Adams.
• A proposito di opere artista
  Quinto Aurelio Simmaco (c. 345 – 402) fu educato in Gallia. Era uno statista romano aristocratico molto eloquente. Simmaco fu proconsole (governatore) d'Africa nel 373, prefetto urbano di Roma nel 384 e 385 e console nel 391. Cercò senza successo di preservare la religione tradizionale di Roma. Fu confutato da Ambrogio, vescovo di Milano, nella famosa questione Vittoria-altare. (Alcuni senatori vollero che l'altare della dea Vittoria - rimosso dall'imperatore Graziano - tornasse in senato). Molti dei suoi scritti sono sopravvissuti: nove libri di lettere, una raccolta di Relationes (dispacci ufficiali), tre panegirici (elogi funebri). Simmaco si impegnò anche alla pubblicazione dell'opera storica di Livio Ab urbe condita (Dalla fondazione della città), libri I-X.