Les fables d’Esope Phirigien, avec celles de Philelphe. Traduction nouvelle, enrichie de discours moraux & historiques & de quatrains à la fin de chaque discours. On a joint à cette nouvelle traduction les fables diverses de gabrias, d’avienus & les contes d’Esope…

Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1708. Hardcover. Very Good+. 2 volumes (152 x 95mm). Vol. I: 297pp., [7] table; Vol. II: 287pp., [4] index. Both volumes with the identical engraved frontispiece depicting the traditional theme of Aesop ruling the animals. The moralizing tales are extensively illustrated with copper- plate engravings by Georg Paul Busch. Volume I contains the life of Aesop by Planudes, and the beginning of Aesop’s Fables and Volume II continues with Aesop’s Fables and includes the Fables of Philelphe, Gabrias and Avienus. Modern binding; (frontispiece of vol. II somewhat chipped, otherwise clean and good). Rare and richly illustrated edition of Aesop’s fables, with extensive dialogue on the moral of each fable. Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde, a clergyman, put his mark on the Aesopic work by contributing a four-line rhyming verse at the end of each fable in italics. Bellegarde also added 18 fables of the Latin poet Philelphus and 37 fables based on Aesop by Gabrias and Avienus. The larger fables added are the “Battle of the Cats and the Rats,” and the “Battle of the Rats and the Frogs.” Thereafter follow five “Tales” of Aesop, taken from Plato’s dialogue “Protagoras,” another six “Poetical fables,” with Olympian Gods as protagonists, two more “Tales,” one taken from Herodot, and a last fable, taken from Gerbellius. The beautiful fable illustrations are by Georg Paul Busch; a Berlin copper-engraver who died in 1756. Rare early edition of Aesopic literature with several other didactic tales and author’s additions.