The Culmination of French Tacitism
TACITUS, Cornelius.
Les oeuvres … a sçavoir, les Annales et Histoires des choses advenues en l’Empire de Rome depuis le trespas d’Auguste. La description des peuples de Germanie, et de leurs moeurs. La Vie de Iules Agricola, ou est traicté de la conqueste et description du pays iadis appellé Bretaigne, et maintenant Angleterre et Escosse. Le tout translaté du Latin en François … par P. D. B. … Paris, Jean Houzé, 1599.
4to, pp. [8], 952, [60, index]; woodcut printer’s device to title-page, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; very light staining to head of first few leaves, rodent damage to head of index leaves with some loss of text, occasional staining to index; otherwise a very good, wide-margined copy; bound in contemporary French vellum over thin pasteboard, foliate oval gilt centrepiece to each cover, double gilt fillet border, flat spine with gilt bands and small floral stamps and lettered directly in gilt ‘COR TACITUS’ at head, edges gilt, yapp fore-edges, strips of French manuscript on vellum bound at each side of textblock, no pastedowns, flyleaves with watermark of a capital letter B; binding slightly soiled, rodent damage to yapp edges and head of spine, small hole to head of upper joint, upper hinge split.
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Les oeuvres … a sçavoir, les Annales et Histoires des choses advenues en l’Empire de Rome depuis le trespas d’Auguste. La description des peuples de Germanie, et de leurs moeurs. La Vie de Iules Agricola, ou est traicté de la conqueste et description du pays iadis appellé Bretaigne, et maintenant Angleterre et Escosse. Le tout translaté du Latin en François … par P. D. B. …
Rare anonymous French translation of the works of Tacitus, at the peak of French interest in his writings, in a contemporary gilt vellum binding.
Tacitus was at the height of his popularity in France at the time of printing; 1599 also saw the printing in Paris of the original Latin text. Both of these were supplied with notes by Justus Lipsius, the greatest Tacitean scholar, as well as by Annibale Scoto and Carlo Pasquale, extracted from their political commentaries on Tacitus printed in 1580, 1581, and 1589 respectively; this French edition adds notes by the unknown translator, which are merely signed ‘B’. This interest in political ambivalence at a time of upheaval and assassination (Henri III was killed in 1589) also encompassed Machiavelli and Guicciardini, reflecting the continuing Italian influence on the French court of Catherine de’ Medici.
‘Readers and commentators agreed that Tacitus was an unparalleled repository of arcana imperii, secrets of state that opened up to the reader the hidden workings of high politics. They explored the techniques of political manipulation used by rulers of ancient Rome and the present day, drawing parallels between life at the imperial and early modern court, where the utile was often far from the honestum’ (Gajda, ‘Tacitus and political thought in early modern Europe, c. 1530–c. 1640’, in The Cambridge Companion to Tacitus (2009), p. 258).
The printing of this edition was split between Houzé and Marc Orry, both of whom are named in the privilege.
No copies traced in the US, and only two in the UK (both CUL).
USTC 38452; Adams T43.