Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c.69-c.122)
De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus, in Latin, manuscript on paper [Italy, 15th century].
One of only 25 surviving copies of Suetonius's De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus, the Roman historian’s work on grammar which bears witness to the lives of the republican and early imperial rhetoricians.

208 x 144mm. ii + 10 + ii leaves, complete, modern foliation 1-14, watermark indistinct, possibly a ladder, 24-25 lines of text, ruled space: 160 x 102mm, occasional scribal annotations in the margins, spaces for large initials left blank but with marginal instructions (first two leaves with small loss at lower right corner and a tear). Modern card covers (darkened). [Bound into:] 20th-century manuscript in the hand of Richard C. Jackson. 230 x 170mm, 111 leaves, of which 38 written. Re-using a 19th-century Italian vellum binding.

Provenance:
(1) Richard C. Jackson (c.1851-1923), F.S.A., collector: his ex-libris, dated 1897, inside the upper card cover and another ex-libris, dated 1900, on the first page of his hand-written manuscript, a bibliographical account of Suetonius’ text.
(2) Colker MS 11; acquired from Maggs in 1945; Faye & Bond, Supplement to de Ricci’s Census (1962), p. 517.

Marvin Colker included the present manuscript in his article ‘Two Manuscripts of Suetonius’ De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus’ (Manuscripta 27, 1983, pp.166-169), with which he added two manuscripts to the census for Suetonius’ text that were unknown to Giorgio Brugnoli when he compiled his edition of 1960. De Grammaticis et Rhetoribus is rare: only one copy of the text is known to be held in American institutional collections.

No VAT on hammer price or buyer's premium.
Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.