AESOP
Les fables d'Esope phrigien, avec celles de Philelphe. Traduction nouvelle, enriche de discours moraux & historiques, & de quatrains à la fin de chaque discours. On a joint à cette nouvelle traduction les Fables diverses de Gabrias, d'Avienus, & Les contes d'Esope.
A Amsterdam, Chez Pierre Mortier, 1708. Two parts in one volume, 12mo. With an engraved frontispiece showing Aesop standing on a gallery holding an armillary sphere, hunting horn and spear, surrounded by a mixed crowd (including children), with a group of wild and domestic animals standing and lying below, 117 half-page engravings (6,5 x 8 cm) for the 117 numbered Aesop fables, initials, endpieces. Marbled half-morocco binding. [12], 297, [7], [4], 287, [5] pp.
€ 395
Rare and beautifully illustrated edition of 117 Aesop's fables in French, each with an extensive discussion of the moral followed by a four-line verse, by Jean Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde. He adds French prose translations of further fables without illustrations: 18 numbered fables by the Renaissance Italian humanist poet and scholar Francesco Filelfo or Philelphus (1398-1481), translated from the Latin verse; 37 fables based on Aesop by Gabrias and Avienus, translated from the Latin verse; two longer fables: the "Battle of the cats and the rats", and the "Battle of the rats and the frogs"; five Aesop "tales" taken from Plato's dialogue Protagoras; six numbered "poetical fables", with Olympian Gods as protagonists; and finally three more "tales", the first from Herodotus and the last from Gerbellius.
Light wear to binding, some pencil notes to endpaper and throughout, repairs to title page, not affecting the text. With en exlibris of Georges Jal. STCN 334560683 (1 copy), Bodemann 97.1, Landwehr, Emblem & fable books F062, WorldCat 42461403 (3 copies).
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