Les œuvres Morales De Plutarque - Paris 1587 - In Folio - Very Rare - Book 18th

PLUTARCHUS - Les Œuvres Morales et Meslées. Translation by Jacques Amyot. Paris, Barthélemy Macé, 1587. Fort in-folio.

PLUTARQUE. Les Œuvres Morales et Meslées de Plutarque, traduictes de Grec en François, revueës et corrigées en plusieurs passages par Maistre Jaques Amyot, Conseiller du Roy et grand Aumosnier de France.

À Paris, chez Barthélemy Macé, 1587. Avec privilège du Roy.

Beautiful Parisian in-folio edition of the famous translation by Jacques Amyot (1513-1593), grand aumônier de France and tutor to the future Charles IX and Henri III.

Divided into two volumes here bound into one strong volume, the work is enriched with marginal annotations and two tables (of treatises and memorable things). It opens with the dedication to King Charles IX.

In-folio measuring 38.5 × 26 cm and 11 cm thick.

About 670 pages, followed by the tables (about 165 pages).

Text decorated with bands and lettrines. Full 18th-century marbled basane binding, spine ribbed.

As a whole in satisfactory condition. Eighteenth-century binding showing some rubbing and a split jaw. Endpapers attached (not original). Some scattered foxing inside. A complete and solid volume, in good use for a 16th-century edition.

Reference: Paris edition addressed to Barthélemy Macé, 1587, not to be confused with the Lyon editions of the same year.

A monument to French Renaissance prose, this translation (first given in 1572) is among the texts that nourished the thinking of Montaigne and his entire century. Even today, it remains one of the finest French versions of Plutarch's ancient wisdom.