Pomponivs Mela. Ivlivs Solinvs. Itinerarivm Antonini Avg. Vibivs Seqvester. P. Victor de regionibus urbis Romæ. Dionysius Afer de Situ orbis Priscian

First Aldine edition. Venice: in aedibus Aldi, et Andreae Soceri (the heirs of Aldus Manutius the Elder and Andrea Torresano the Elder); October 1518. Octavo (6"" x 3 13/16"", 152mm x 97mm). [Full collation available.] Bound in contemporary Venetian paneled calf with two pairs of silk ties. With four knotted ""Greek style"" tools in the center panel. On the spine, three raised bands. Ink manuscript to the fore-edge of the text-block: ""POMP. MELA. ET SOLINVS."" Small losses along the lower edge, with scuffs and the odd spot of soiling. The corners bumped and the ties perished. The text-block remarkably fresh, with occasional sidelining in ink. A reference in ink manuscript to Pliny in the margin of fol. 119r. Collated complete (including both the q8 and G3 blanks) against the register and UCLA. Ex-libris of Emilio Pittaluga to the title-page, completed in ink manuscript ""ottimo esemplare."" Bookplate of T. Kimball Brooker laid in. Pomponius Mela (d. AD 45) and Caius (Gaius) Julius Solinus (fl. ca. AD 225) together were the twin stars of Roman (i.e., Latin) ancient geography through the medieval period, and far more influential than Ptolemy, whose Geographical Guidance was largely inaccessible to Continental scholars before it was translated into Latin in 1406. A frequent source of Pliny (whose Historia naturalis has geographical components but belongs properly to a different genre), Mela s De situ orbis bridges the gap between the Greek geographers (Eratosthenes, Ptolemy) and his successors. Solinus wrote his De mirabilibus mundi (On the wonders of the world) -- also called the Polyhistor (very learned), as here -- in the first half of the third century of the current era. The works of Mela and Solinus fill a little more than half the volume (through fol. 127). Four shorter works follow, making the volume a useful collection of geographical works. The first is the Itinerarium -- itinerary -- carried out under Emperor Antoninus Pius (AD 86-161), which lists in order the places along a road as they stretched across the Roman Empire. Vibius Sequester (ca. AD 400) provides a literary parallel; conventionally titled De fluminibus, fontibus, lacubus, nemoribus, paludibus, montibus, gentibus per litteras (fol. 191ff.) it gathers the place-names mentioned in Classical literature -- particularly Vergil and Ovid. Publius Victor is a confected Classical author, made to provide authorship for a XVc (first published 1505) treatise De regionibus urbis Romae liber (fol. 201ff.), which describes the neighborhoods (regiones) of ancient Rome. The volume finishes with the poem of Dionysius Periegetes (sometimes called, as here, Dionysius Afer -- born as he was in Libya in perhaps the AD IIc), a member of the ""Second Sophistic,"" composed in Greek and translated by Priscian into Latin as De orbis situ (fol. 215ff.). These final treatises speak particularly to the lineage of the work through the press of Aldus Manutius (Aldo Manuzio, ca. 1450-1515), the great Venetian humanist-printer whom we have largely to thank for the dissemination of texts in small formats. Thomas Kimball Brooker (Kim, b. 1939) is an American industrialist with a life-long scholarly interest in books. To wit, his Harvard Business School Master's thesis was titled Rare Books as a Hedge against Devaluation and Inflation; he went on to get an MA in Art History and a PhD, both from the University of Chicago. He is the most significant collector -- certainly among the living, perhaps ever, or at the least on par with the likes of J.P. Morgan -- of early printed books, with a particular focus on Aldus Manutius. His collection is being dispersed by Sotheby's in a series of eight auctions, the Bibliotheca Brookeriana, from 2023 into 2026 (to include his the formidable reference library). The present volume was lot 245 in part II (the Aldine Collection D-M) 18 October 2024 in New York. Adams M 1053; Edit16 46864; Renouard, Alde 83/6; UCLA 171; USTC 841939.