Trattato brieve dello schierare in ordinanza gli eserciti et dell' apparar ecchiamento della guerra, Di Leone, per la Gratia di Dio Imperatore..

In Venetia [i.e. Venice]: Appresso Francesco de' Franceschi Senese, 1586. [40], 344 [i.e. 346]pp. Contemporary vellum, contrasting black calf lettering-piece. Marked and discoloured, old vellum repair to head of wormed spine. Hinges exposed, naive paper extensions to shaved margins of leaves Hh1-4. From the library of Giovanni Domenico Berio, marchese di Salza (d. 1791), which passed to his son, author and librettist Francesco Maria Berio (1765-1820), with their 'Ex Libris Marchionis Salsae' armorial bookplate on the front pastedown, further armorial bookplate bearing the motto 'Comme je fus' is on the rear pastedown. The first edition of an Italian translation of the Tactica, a significant Byzantine military treatise composed by, or for, the Emperor Leo VI The Wise (866-912), with choice later Italian and English bibliophilic provenance. First translated into Latin (Basel, 1554), the work discusses formations of infantry and cavalry, drills, in addition to siege and naval warfare. Composed in 20 Diataxeis, or constitutons, it takes the form almost of a legislative rule book, and refers to the customs of enemies, including the 'holy war' of Islam, As Cockle notes, the Tactica was borrowed 'extensively from the "Strategica” of Maurice' ', but is nevertheless 'of the greatest value; his explanations, especially concerning battle formations, are well given, and on this point he has supplied us with information to be met with in no other source'. The Italian translator of this edition, Filippo Pigafetta (1533-1604), was a Venetian mathematician and explorer descended from the navigator Antonio Pigafetta, who served as Magellan's assistant. As Baretti notes, after publishing this work Filippo 'met with some good manuscript of the original', and. 'then corrected his work, and re- printed it in 1602, under the title of Documenti di Guerra.' The majority of the notable Neopolitan library of the di Salzas - including this volume - was purchased after Francesco Maria Berio's death by William Ward, 3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward (1750- 1823), for his son John William Ward, later 1st Earl of Dudley (1781-1833); which reveals the identity of the unnamed bookplate at the rear of this volume. More recently, this volume was lately dispersed from the Cottlesloe Military Library - 'probably the most extensive private collection of early printed books focused on military matters', of Thomas Francis Fremantle, 3rd Lord Cottesloe (1862-1965), without any indication of such. Not in Adams. Cockle p.xxxix. Quarto.