s.l. [Venetijs], Impressit Volumen hoc Iacobus Pentius de Leuco Impresorum omnium accuratissimus, Die 23 decembris 1503 Anno Leonardi Lauretani.S.Principis altero, in folio (31 x 21,5 cm), 1f. (French title), CLXI, A2-A8 B-T8 V10, seventeeth century brown full calf (restorations on spine ends, joints, leading edges and corners), spine raised on 3 large bands.
Very scarce edition of the Martial Epigrams. First of the editions given by the Venetian printer Jacobus Pentius de Leucho, which is printed a few years after that one given by Aldus in 1501. This edition of Aldus was well counterfeited one year later in Lyon. Very few libraries have our edition and very few bibliographers speak about it. The National library in Paris has a copy, British Library own only the second edition published by the same editor in 1510. There is a copy in the Travers Collection of the University library of Sussex. The NUC doesn't mention any copies in the United States but the university library of Illinois acquired one copy in 1988. The Royale library of Belgium has lost its copy. The Epigrams of Marcus Valerius Martialis gather fourteen books containing short poems with moreover, at the head of the work, the "Liber of Speculis" which depicts spectacles which took place under the Roman emperors Titien and Domitien. The books thirteenth and fourteenth carry separated titles, the first one ' ' Xenia' ' and the other one ' ' Apophoreta' '. The commentators of these works are Domizio Calderini (1446-1478) and Giorgio Merula (1430-1494) about which Erasme speaks with a lot of respect. The first leaf withthe French title carries seventeenth century hand annotations and the upper part of this leave has a paper restoration without loss of text. Some marginal gloses throught the text with browned ink. Each book is decorated with engraved ornemental letter with floral or allegorical patterns. Some letters in the text are accentuated with ink and some sentences are underlined by the same process. Minor worm track on the second leaves after the french title reaching some letters. Typographical mark of J Pentius de Leuco on colophon. Cfr. Panzer II, p. 262. Not in Adams neither in British STC Italian Books, neither STC North American, nor in NUC.