Lycophronis Chalcidensis Alexandra. Poëma obscurum. Ioannes Meursius recensuit, & libro commentario illustravit. Altera editio aucta & innovata. Accessit Iosephi Scaligeri Iulii Caes. F. versio centum locis emendatior.

Leiden (Lugduni Batavorum), Ex officina Ludovici Elzevirii. 1599. 8vo. (XVI),350,(18 index) p. Calf (19th century) 16 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 15153098; Willems 39; Rahir 25; Berghman 835; Hoffmann 2,569; cf. Smitskamp, The Scaliger collection, no.93 for the first edition of 1597; Brunet 3,1247-1248; Ebert 12543; Graesse 4,309) (Details: Back elaborately gilt with four ornamental lozenges. Brown shield in the second 'campartment'. Boards with a triple gilt fillet border, and gilt edges. Edges of the book block sprinkled. Marbled endpapers. The colophon on the last page reads: 'Lugduni Batavorum. Excudebat Ioannes Balduini. VIII. Kal. Maias. anno 1599') (Condition: Nice copy, some slight wear to the extremities, just a bit of rubbing to the joints. Some small, old ink marginalia. Last gathering slightly browning, otherwise a clean and fresh copy) (Note: Lycophron, 3rd cent. BC, was called to Alexandria in Egypt by King Ptolemaeus Philadelphos. There this tragedian wrote his 'Alexandra' (or Kassandra), ca. 1474 iambic trimeters, in which Kassandra tells about the fall of Troy, and the fates of the Greek and Trojan Heroes. It is his only surviving work, which is full of the extreme and designed obscurity that the Alexandrians, who were fond of a style full of learned allusions and playful riddles, loved. Rose calls the 'Alexandra' a monstruous riddle. 'In form it is the speech of a messenger, a servant of Priam, (...), coming to tell his master that Kassandra (= Alexandra) has just delivered a mysterious oracle. (...) The prophecy concerns the whole history of Troy, the Trojans and their descendants, together with the fates of the Greeks for many generations to come, and from beginning to end it calls nothing and no one by any wellknown name, personal or geographical'. (H.J. Rose, A handbook of Greek literature', London 1964, p. 336). For instance, Lycophron calls the mythical hero Heracles the 'Lion of the triple evening', expecting the reader to know that Heracles, when he was begotten, the night was thrice its normal length. § This edition of 1599 is a revised and improved second edition. The first edition was produced two years earlier, in 1597, by the then 18 years old Dutchman Joannes Meursius, or in Dutch 'Jan van Meurs', 1579-1639. He was a student of the genius Joseph Justus Scaliger, born in 1540, who lectured since 1593 in Leiden, till his death in 1609. Scaliger helped and encouraged his pupil in the production of this edition. In the preface Meursius tells us that he wouldnot have dared to edit such a dark and difficult text without the help of Scaliger. Scaliger helped him with the commentary and gave him permission to reprint his verse translation, with corrections. This metrical and smooth Latin translation had been published previously in Basel in 1566. The last 251 pages of the book contain the commentary of Meursius, 'quod sine interprete vix est ut quisquam intellegat'. (preface, leaf A8 recto) Meursius was later appointed professor of History, and of Greek (1610/13) at his own university. He is best known for his editions of byzantine authors, and for the books he wrote on the history of ancient Greece, for example on festivals, Eleusis, and the antiquities of Athens and Attica. His work was widely used as source by later ancient historians. (Sandys 2,310/11)) (Collation: A-Z8 a8) (Photographs on request)