Demosthenis Oratio De Corona : Accurate Emendate, Argumento Locupletata, & Partibus Distincta [Two Volumes in One] [Sponge-Marbled Manuscript (waste) Binding] Demosthenis [Demosthenes] Antiquarian Books,Books on Books: Decorative bindings,Classical Greek and Latin Studies

12mo 7" - 7½" tall; 239 pages; Paris: Apud Dionysium Joannem Aumont, 1770. 12mo. Two parts in one volume, each with separate title page: Oratio de Corona in Latin (83 pp. ) , followed by Oratio de Corona in the original Greek (156 pp. ). Both with decorative woodcut devices; typography clear and sharp, with wide margins retained. Bound in contemporary French manuscript waste, the boards covered with a repurposed handwritten leaf later treated with sponge-marbled decoration in red, blue, and black. Small gilt-lettered leather title label to spine; page block edges sprinkled. Light blanching to spine and a faint vertical crease. The underlying script, partly legible through the mottling, in French prose appears to be iin a moral-theological vein, referring to "trop de liberté, " "leurs passions, " and the biblical figure of David possibly a sermon or devotional commentary, recycled here as binder s material. A vivid example of 18th-century provincial binding practice, combining thrift and ornament while preserving manuscript traces otherwise lost. Condition: Binding sound, with light rubbing to edges and corners; spine lightly blanched. Contents bright, clean, and unmarked. A handsome Paris edition of one of the monuments of classical rhetoric, notable for its unusual manuscript-waste binding a bibliophilic curiosity linking Greek oratory, Enlightenment-era printing, and French devotional writing in a single artifact. VG