M. annaei lucani pharsalia, sive de bello civili caesaris & pompeii

Venice: Stephani Curti, 1689. Engraved title by Portio F., second letterpress title with woodcut engraving of a lion, decorated initials. Seventeenth century vellum over pasteboards, spine hand-lettered, front cover lacking, spine torn and detached from inner hinge; small stain at upper fore-edges, text not affected. An edition of Lucan's ten books on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey as well as an excerpt from Petronius's Satyricon consisting of the writer's "poem" on the civil war. The annotator, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a major figure in the history of law, first published his notes on Lucan in 1614. Housman remarked that, despite criticisms, "[Grotius'] exercise of choice and judgment was serious and steady; he is the greatest critic, excepting Bentley, who ever edited Lucan; and even now it is often necessary to a bandon Cortius and Oudendorp and the rest of his successors and return to the text of Grotius.