Groth, Cologne, 1694
Second, expanded edition of Nodot’s translation of Petronius’ Satyricon.
Description: 2 vols. Contemporary calf, gilt titles and decoration to spine, raised bands. Marbled endpapers. Sextodecimo: 16 × 9 cm; [43]ll., 407pp.; [4]ll., 454pp. Each vol. with a frontispiece (repeating) and a total of 9 engraved plates. Edges speckled red.
Provenance: Bookplate of L. Gratien-Le Bon, on the front pastedown of the first vol.
Ref.: Brunet: iv, 576; Graesse: v, 239
Condition: Bindings a bit scuffed and worn. A tear of about 2 cm in the outer joint of vol. 2. Rear board of vol. 2 is scuffed over an area of approximately 1 × 4 cm. Inner joints of both volumes intact. Contents slightly browned due to age, sporadically somewhat browned, soiled and finger-stained. Still a good copy.
Notes: Only fragments of the original Satyricon have survived. François Nodot filled the gaps in the surviving text with imaginative forgeries and produced a French translation of the whole (1692–94). Brunet notes that the present edition is “the best edition of this translation [that] first appeared under this title”. There was also an edition published in 1694 by Marteau, Cologne, but Brunet describes it as “less beautiful than the other edition of the same date”. This edition was supplemented by an index of persons, a preface and a justification by Nodot, which are missing from the (rare) first edition of 1691. Text in Latin and French.