Beschreibung:

APOLLONIUS Pergaeus (fl. 2 n d half 3 r d century BC). Opera . Edited and translated from the Greek into Latin by Giambattista Memmo. Venice: Bernardino Bindoni for Giambattista Memmo, 1537.
APOLLONIUS Pergaeus (fl. 2 n d half 3 r d century BC). Opera . Edited and translated from the Greek into Latin by Giambattista Memmo. Venice: Bernardino Bindoni for Giambattista Memmo, 1537. 2 o (303 x 203mm). Collation: a-p 6 . 89 leaves (without final blank). Roman type. Title printed in red and black (red first). Woodcut of the author with his mathematical attributes on title, wide historiated six-block title-border showing classical poets, philosophers and scientists, and an enclosed garden; numerous woodcut diagrams. Contemporary Louvain binding of blind-panelled polished fawn calf over pasteboard, gilt fleuron at the angles of the rectangle, small lion gilt-tooled at the angles of the rhombus, gilt crowned imperial double-headed eagle in the center of the sides, gilt fleur-de-lis and dolphin alternately tooled in compartments of the spine, front pastedown is a fragment of a 12 t h -century vellum manuscript on divination in a late-Carolingian hand, back pastedown is a fragment of a 13 t h -century vellum manuscript Evangeliary in an early Gothic hand with musical notation (corners worn, spine defective at head and foot, front cover almost detached). Provenance : JOHN DEE 1527-1608, Elizabethan magus, mathematician, book collector, author of The perfect arte of navigation and Propaedeumata aphoristica (Latin ownership inscription dated 1549 on title, some marginal notes and underlinings, autograph table on flyleaf of Ramist systematization of the mathematics in Apollonius, Archimedes and Eutocius of Ascalon) -- JOHN WINTHROP, JR, 1606-76, son of the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor, physician, governor of Connecticut colony, book collector (ownership signature dated 1631 and his sigil, the hieroglyphic monad invented by Dee, on title) -- Waitstill Winthrop, 1642-1717, son of John, Jr., chief justice of Massachusetts (signature on flyleaf) -- Frederick Winthrop of New York (ownership entry dated May 18 t h 1812 on title) -- Charles Fraser (presentation inscription on flyleaf to) -- Robert Charles Winthrop (1809-94, Speaker of the House, senator from Massachusetts) -- Acquired from Goodspeed's Book Shop 1975. RARE FIRST EDITION of the first four books of Apollonius of Perga's Conics , the only work of Greek mathematics to rival in importance those of Euclid and Archimedes. The Greek editio princeps did not appear until 1710, edited by Edmund Halley. Books V-VII are not extant in Greek, but survive in an Arabic version, translated into Latin by Abraham Ecchellensis and only published in 1661 at Florence. ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE GREATEST IMPORTANCE, bought by the celebrated English polymath, John Dee during his two-year stay at the University of Louvain, when he formed a close friendship with the Flemish cartographer and mathematician, Gerard Mercator. Dee's collecting and annotating form a body of work no less significant than his published and unpublished writings. The adversaria show his reading practice. His library of "more than 3000 books rendered any visitor entirely dependent upon Dee's memory as a guide to their contents. The myth of the magus is hardly more wonderful than the figure of John Dee as 'The Living Library'" (Lorna Hudson, TLS review 19 September 1995 of W.H. Sherman, John Dee The politics of reading and writing in the English Renaissance , Massachusetts University Press 1995). His manuscript catalogue survives and was edited by Julian Roberts and Andrew Watson, John Dee's Library Catalogue (The Bibliographical Society 1990). The books that have survived the library's dispersal are now located in institutional and private libraries on three continents. THIS COPY'S AMERICAN PROVENANCE IS EQUALLY REMARKABLE. The same year that he acquired the book, John Winthrop the younger crossed the ocean and brought his considerable scientific library to Massachusetts Bay. It became the largest in the colonies. In 1812 his descendants distributed the collection to Harvard, Yale and other institutions