574J Cicero, Marcus Tullius  (106 B.C.-44 B.C.)

M. Tullii Ciceronis de De Philosophia.  Prima Pars Id Est, Academicarum quæstionum editionis primæ liber se-cundus, editionis secundæ liber primus, Definibus bonorum & malorum libri V. Tusculanarum quæstionum libri V.  Quibus in libris, quæ in alijs editioni- bus deprauata legebantur, mul-ta sunt restituta.

(Venetiis, apud Aldi filios, M.D. XLI. Mense augusto)

                                                                                                                Price $ 1,100

Octavo 15.5 x 9.3 Cm. Signatures:  *4, a-z8, A-H8, I4. Aldine device on title pages and verso of final leaf . First volume only.   Bound in Contemporary  blind  roll tooled German pig skin  over wooden board  With dated roll tooling  dated 1539  of Justica, Pruden, Lucrec, and strawberries, flowers and ivy leaves and  “IVH (&) 1543” in  top and bottom panels on the front board. 

This edition has an introductory letter to Diego Hurtado de Mendoza by the editor Paulus Manutius.  Ciceros’ Academicarum Quaestionum, Libri 4, of which, however, only the first and fourth books are extant; these are here in this volume;  De finibus bonorum et malorum (“On the ends of good and evil”) is a Socratic dialogue by the Roman orator, politician, and Academic  Skeptic philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero. It consists of three dialogues, over five books, in which Cicero discusses the philosophical views of Epicureanism, Stoicism, and the Platonism of Antiochus of Ascalon which supports a hybrid system of Platonism, Aristotelianism (which he views as a single “Old Academy” tradition), and Stoicism. The treatise is structured so that each philosophical system is described in its own book, and then disputed in the following book (with exception of Antiochus’ view which is both explained and disputed in book five). The book was developed in the summer of the year 45 BC, and was written over the course of about one and a half months. 

The Tusculanae Disputationes is a series of five  books written by Cicero, around 45 BC   attempting to popularize Stoic philosophy in Ancient Rome.  It is so called as it was reportedly written at his villa in Tusculum. The five books are : “On the contempt of death”,”On bearing pain”,”On grief of mind. “On other perturbations of the mind”, Whether virtue alone be sufficient for a happy life” .  The rhetor’s theme De contemptu mundi, on the contempt of the world, was taken up by Boethius in the troubled closing phase of Late Antiquity and by Bernard of Cluny in the first half of the twelfth century. In the Tusculan Disputations is the locus classicus of the legend of the Sword of Damocles.

Ahmanson-Murphy  271 (vol. 1); UCLA catalogue,; 298; Renouard,; 122:4; Brown, J.C. Cat., 1482-1700,; I:129; Adams,; C-1749; Brunet,; II:16; BM STC Italian, 1465-1600,; p. 175Schweiger II, p.172; Adams C 1749. EDIT; 16 CNCE 12250 Index Aureliensis; 138.212; Renouard, Annali delle edizioni Aldine,; 122,4; Adams C; 1749; Fock, Bibliotheca Aldina, S.; 60; Ebert, Allgemeines bibliographisches Lexikon; 4472