Cicero re-ordered
Comments (5) Marginal notes in a late 15th or early 16th century Northern hand, possibly English, in a copy of Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum, edited by Georgius Merula (Venice : [Vindelinus de Spira] for Johannes de Colonia, [not after 9 November] 1471; Inc.3.B.3.1b[1332]; Oates 1610) allow us to identify this edition as the editio princeps of the text.
The notes highlight a mistake in the imposition of 2 leaves in the third gathering of the book with consequent erroneous transposition of text between the end of leaf [c6] and the beginning of leaf [d1], corresponding to Cicero’s Book 2, 41-50. A quick check of other copies of this edition held in the British Library confirms that the mistake recurs in other copies of the edition and not only in the copy held at CUL. A further check of the text run in the German edition published by Ulrich Zel in Cologne around the same time (ISTC dates Zel’s edition to ca. 1471; Inc.4.A.4.1[295]; 362), shows that the erroneous textual transposition is present here as well and, moreover, it falls in the middle of pages, a clear indication that Zel used a copy of Vindelinus’s edition as his copy-text.
The textual mistake is also present in a subsequent edition published in Paris “Au Soufflet Vert” (i.e. Louis Symonel et Socii), between 1475-1479 (Oates 2903).
The book came as part of the Bequest of Richard Holdsworth, Master of Emmanuel College, adjudged to the University in 1664.
