Physical
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[xxxvi], 448, [32] pp., octavo, 195:115 mm., charts, wide margins, light age and damp staining, stamps. A very good copy bound in contemporary full vellum on boards, signed by Immanuel Low on front panel. |
Detailed
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Comprehensive work on Greek and Roman science, divided into two main parts, the first based on the Roman savant Varro, who deals with various aspects of human life, including procreation and pregnancy, and the influence that music and the zodiac had on these topics, as well as how to cast horoscopes. Censorius then treats the different divisions of the calendar (time), astronomy, geometry, music, metrics and versification. Title page in red and black. Dedication to Joann Honert and introduction. Ancient Greek work on Chapter 17 tells how Berossus brought astrology to Greece. Chapter 18 describes Mesopotamian calculations methods used by Greeks. Accompnaied by two charts and concluding with an endex.
Censorinus, Roman grammarian and miscellaneous writer, flourished during the 3rd century A.D. He was the author of a lost work De Accentibus and of an extant treatise De Die Nat au, written in 238, and dedicated to his patron Quintus Caerellius as a birthday gift. The contents are of a varied character: the natural history of man, the influence of the stars and genii, music, religious rites, astronomy, the doctrines of the Greek philosophers. The second part deals with chronological and mathematical questions, and has been of great service in determining the principal epochs of ancient history. The whole is full of curious and interesting information. The style is clear and concise, although somewhat rhetorical, and the Latinity, for the period, good. The chief authorities used were Varro and Suetonius. Some scholars, indeed, hold that the entire work is practically an adaptation of the lost Pratum of Suetortius, The fragments of a work De Natali Institutione, deaiing with astronomy, geometry, music and versification, and usually printed with the De Die Natali of Censorinus, are not by him. Part of the original MS., containing the end of the genuine work, and the title and name of the author of the fragment are lost.
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