Antiquitates Romanae [translated by Lampo Birago]. by HUME, David (owner) - DIONYSIUS HALICARNASSENSIS - 24 February 1480

Treviso: Bernardinus Celerius, 24 February 1480. From the library of David Hume First edition, from the library of the Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume, with his engraved armorial bookplate (state B) to the front pastedown, a compelling link between the great historian of antiquity and of the enlightenment.
Dionysius Halicarnassensis, "Greek historian and teacher of rhetoric, flourished during the reign of Augustus. He went to Rome after the termination of the civil wars, and spent twenty-two years in studying the Latin language and literature and preparing materials for his history" (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The present work "embraced the history of Rome from the mythical period to the beginning of the first Punic War... His chief object was to reconcile the Greeks to the rule of Rome, by dilating upon the good qualities of their conquerors. According to him, history is philosophy teaching by examples, and this idea he has carried out from the point of view of the Greek rhetorician. But he has carefully consulted the best authorities, and his work and that of Livy are the only connected and detailed extant accounts of early Roman history" (ibid.) Dionysius's work was hugely successful.
Hume was an avid reader from an early age and the family home at Ninewells would have contained, according to Mossner "a fair range of the Latin classics in prose and poetry, a few of the Greek, a few more of the French, and a miscellaneous lot of the English" (Mossner p. 30). As a student at Edinburgh, Hume's education probably included a course on Roman antiquities under Charles Mackie, the recently appointed professor of universal history. We know from his writings that he was familiar with the work of Dionysius, citing him in at least two of his essays, the essay "of Polygamy and Divorces" in volume two of his Essays Moral and Political (1742) and in the essay "Of the Populousness of ancient nations", included in his Political Discourses of 1752. In a letter written from Ninewells in February 1752, shortly before the Political Discourses were published, Hume remarks; "I have amus'd myself lately with an Essay or Dissertation on the Populousness of Antiquity, which led me into many Disquisitions concerning both the pubic & domestic Life of the Antients. Having read over almost all the Classics both Greek and Latin, since I form'd that Plan, I have extracted what serv'd most to my Purpose: But I have not a Strabo, & know not where to get one in this Neighbourhood" (quoted in Mossner, p. 263).
It is interesting to note that in his citation of Dionysius, Hume refers only to "Books" and "Sections", suggesting that he was reading from early published sources. In citations from later printed sources he provides Book and Chapter references, clearly drawing his quotations from later editions of those authors' works.
Quite how David Hume might have acquired this volume is unclear. It is not mentioned in Norton & Norton's The David Hume Library, but as they note, there are very few details of how Hume's library was dispersed, and equally little about how he obtained his books.
There are at least six issues of the book, frequently mixed, here with the colophon printed in capitals, the date correct, and the name of the translator given. Folio (288 x 202 mm). 17th-century vellum, manuscript title to spine. Housed in blue cloth solander box. 300 leaves, complete with the first blank. Capital spaces, with guide letters. Leaves numbered in an early hand in roman numerals, renumbered in arabic when rebound in the 17th century correcting misbinding of several gatherings, occasional manuscript marginalia in a number of early and 18th-century hands. Spine soiled, mild stain to first few text leaves; a very good copy. Goff D250; Hain 6239; Pellechet 4300. ISTC locates four copies in Scotland, three at the National library of Scotland, and one at the University of Glasgow, all of them acquired after Hume's death. Ernest Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2001.