Thucydides (c. 460 B.C.-c. 400 B.C.) trans. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre.

Description:

Thucydides (c. 460 B.C.-c. 400 B.C.) trans. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre. London: Seile, 1629. First edition of Hobbes' translation, his first book, and the first English translation from the Greek; folio, engraved title, illustrated with three folding maps and two full page plates, contemporary speckled calf, rebacked, ex libris Robert Biddulph Phillipps, with his bookplate, 12 3/4 x 8 1/8 in.
"In his verse autobiography Hobbes explained that Thucydides was his favourite ancient historian; what apparently attracted him was the cool dissection of political motivation and the 'realist' approach to power, together with the peculiarly Thucydidean analysis of the role of rhetoric in political debate. This translation was an important achievement, establishing Hobbes at a stroke as one of the leading Grecianists of his day. Hobbes also drew the elaborate map of ancient Greece which accompanied the text" (Noel Malcolm in ONDB).
Estimate $2,000-3,000

[pi]1, A4, (a)-(c)4, B-Z4, Aa-Zz4, Aaa-Yyy4, Zzz5.


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