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Tag Archives: soul

Book of the Week — Voyage of the soul: Five tales from Plato

30 Monday Jul 2018

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Apollo Bindery, Dante, Hermes, Mark Smith, Peter Cohen, Petrarch Press, Phiale Painter, Plato, sheepskin parchment, soul, vase, voyage


There is one way, then, in which a man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul — if in life he has abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do more harm than good, and has devoted himself to the pleasures of acquiring knowledge, and so by decking his soul not with a borrowed beauty but with its own — with self-control, and goodness, and courage, and liberality, and truth — has fitted himself to await his journey to the next world. — from “The True Earth”

Voyage of the Soul
Plato
Petrarch Press and Apollo Bindery, 1996
B358 S65 1996

Introduction by Mark Smith. Graphic design by Peter Cohen. Title page illustration: Hermes Conducting a Soul to the Afterworld from a vase painting by the Phiale Painter. Set in Dante type. Printed on sheepskin parchment. Rare Books copy is lettered “XI.”

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Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

05 Monday Dec 2016

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animals, color, color theory, Empedocles, Florence, Florentinae, Isaac Newton, Laurentii Torrentini, Loeb Classical Library, medicine, Neapolitan, philosopher, Piza, plants, Pseudo Aristotle, scientist, Simone Porzio (1497-1554), soul, vellum

qc495-a7-1548-title

“Those colours are simple which belong to the elements, fire, air, water and earth. For air and water are naturally white in themselves, while fire and the sun are golden. The earth is also naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed. This becomes clear when we consider ashes; for they become white when the moisture which caused their dyeing is burned out of them; but not completely so, for they are also dyed by smoke, which is black. In the same way sand becomes golden, because the fiery red and black tints the water. The colour black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature. But the other colours are evidently due to mixture, when they are blended with each other. For darkness follows when light fails. — Loeb Classical Library translation

DE COLORIBUS LIBELLVS A SIMONE PORTIO…
Pseudo Aristotele (384 BC – 322 BC)
Florentinae: ex officina Laurentii Torrentini, 1548
Editio princips

This is perhaps the earliest work on color theory, attributed to Aristotle, who took his ideas from Empedocles and went a step further, creating a base line occupied by seven colors. Aristotle’s base line was applied to all color-systems up to the time of Isaac Newton. His assumption was to represent colors as actual characteristics of the surface of bodies and not as subjective phenomena produced by the eye or in the brain as a result of the properties of light. Aristotle observed colors very accurately, as well as their contrasts. He noted, for instance, that the violet appearing on white wool appeared different when on black wool and that colors appeared different in daylight than in candlelight. Only much later were these phenomena systematically examined and explained.

This edition was translated and edited with extensive scholarly commentary by Simone Porzio (1497-1554), a Neapolitan philosopher and scientist who was a fanatical disciple of Pomponazzi. Porzio eventually gave up lecturing on medicine at Piza and his scientific studies to focus on studying philosophy. Porzio denied immortality in all forms and taught that the human soul is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants.

Binding is old vellum with a red leather lettering piece.

qc495-a7-1548-pg23

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Book of the week — M. Tullii Ciceronis Orationum…

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

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Aldine Press, Cicero, edition, enemy, fools, government, Greek, Kennneth Lawrence Ott Collection, Latin, letters, Marcus Tullius Cicero, murderer, nation, Okanangan Count Museum, orations, Paoli Manutii, plague, scholar, soul, traitor, treason, Venetiis, victims, Washington

PA6279-A2-1554-v.1-titlePA6279-A2-1554-v.1-pg1PA6279-A2-1554-v.1-Oration1

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

M. TULLII CICERONIS ORATIONUM PARS I.[-III] CUM…
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE)
Venetiis : Apud Paulum Manutium, Aldi filium, MDLIII…etc. (1554-1559)
PA6279 A2 1554

Paoli Manutii led his father’s famous Aldine Press from a concentration on ancient Greek texts, his father’s love, to a concentration on classical Latin texts, his own love. In particular, Paoli maintained a life-long passion for Cicero. He restored the reputation of the Aldine Press by publishing scholarly editions of Cicero’s letters and orations. Much of the correcting and editing was his own. He continued with his work on Cicero by adding commentary. He published his first edition of Cicero’s work in 1540, adding another edition in 1547. This is the first complete edition of Cicero’s orations, published in three volumes. From the Kenneth Lieurance Ott Collection donated to the Okanangan County Museum, Washington.

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Book of the week – De rerum natura

04 Monday Jan 2016

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afterlife, Alexander Pope, biblical, blind-tooled, blindstamped, body, British, Cambridge, Church of England, classics, Constance, De rerum natura, decoration, engraved, Epicurus, fire, folio, French Revolution, frontispiece, Fulda, Germany, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Gilbert Wakefield, gilt, gods, government, Greek, Hamilton, Homer, Horace, Jesus College, Londini, Lucretius, mathematics, ministry, morocco, mortal, nature, New Testament, pamphlets, poem, poet, portrait, punishment, rules, scholar, soul, Titus Lucretius Carus, tragedies, Tuscan, Unitarian, vicar, Virgil, Wa, Wakefield, world

PA6482-A2-1796-v.1-portraitPA6482-A2-1796-v.1-titlePA6482-A2-1796-v.1-pg1

DE RERUM NATURA LIBROS SEX, AD EXEMPLARIUM…
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Londini: Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7
PA6482 A2 1796 oversize

De Rerum Natura is the only surviving work of Lucretius. Only one manuscript copy of it is known to exist. This manuscript was found in 1417 in a monastery at Fulda in Germany by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, a Tuscan secretary to a church general council at Constance.

It is a didactic poem of 7,400 lines in six books, in which the poet expounds on the world view of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The object was to abolish belief that the gods intervened in the world and that the soul could experience punishment in an afterlife. Lucretius demonstrated that the world is, instead, governed by mechanical laws of nature. He described the soul as mortal and posited that it perishes with the body.

This is the first edition of the “Wakefield” edition, the edition by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801). Wakefield was a biblical scholar. The son of a vicar, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, through a scholarship. He studied mathematics and the classics. Although he took orders, he left the ministry and the Church of England and became a Unitarian. He earned his living as a tutor while writing controversial pamphlets attacking the government. He was imprisoned for two years for the publication of a pamphlet titled, “A Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landoff’s Address,” in which he defended the French Revolution. To support himself, he published a translation of the New Testament (1792), companion editions to Horace (1794) and Virgil (1796), an edition with commentary of Greek tragedies (1794), an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s Homer (1796), and this, his Lucretius. He published his De Rerum Natura at his own expense.

The book established Wakefield as a leading British scholar. The large paper, folio edition was mostly destroyed by a fire in the printing-office in which they were stored.

Engraved portrait of Gilbert Wakefield on frontispiece. Bound in contemporary straight-grained black morocco, panelled covers with broad blind-tooled borders and gilt edges, spine with broad gilt rules and blindstamped decoration. Edition of fifty copies.

 

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