PHILOSTRATUS. De vita Apollonii Tyanei. EUSEBIUS. Contra Hieroclem.

Editio princeps of both works. Copy belonging to Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Aldo's biographer. Manuzio only approved the edition in 1504, although the colophons of the two works are dated 1501 and 1502 respectively. Lowry: “We do not know the exact story behind the edition of Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana: Aldus finished printing the text in March 1501 but did not publish it until May 1504, and sent it out with an introduction which attacked the work point by point and declared it the worst thing he had ever read.”

Philostratus' text is accompanied by Eusebius' refutation of Sossianus Hierocles (c. 303 AD), a Roman aristocrat and official who had drawn parallels between Apollonius and Christ in his treatise Philalethe. In a long dedicatory letter dated May 1504 to the translator of Eusebius, Zenobio Acciaiuoli, Aldo states that he had expected great merit from Philostratus' work, but that he could not remember reading anything worse: it is nothing more than a pile of fables. However, once he had undertaken the task, and since three Latin editions were already in circulation, he decided to complete it and added Eusebius' admirable little work.

Folio. 292 x 201 mm. Precious 19th-century binding in long-grain apple green Morocco leather, double frame of rules with gilded fleurons at the corners, spine with raised bands with matching fleurons, endpapers and edges with fine polychrome. 148 pages, composed as follows: [66], [8], 73, [1].). Two different colophons, on page h9v (also in Greek) “Venetiis apud Aldum mense Martio 1501” and on page i9 “mense februario 1502”. Another date “May 1504” in Aldo's letter to Zenobi Acciaiuoli, on page Apoll. 2v. Two printer's devices, on the title page and on the back of the last page. Greek and Roman characters. Ex libris glued to the inside front cover “Trinity College de Cambridge”; another ex libris glued to the blank back of the flyleaf “Firmin-Didot.” A fine copy, in a magnificent green morocco binding, from a prestigious provenance.