Volgarizgamento di Palladio [sic -- for "Volgarizzamento"] Testo di lingua la prima volta stampato ['Opus agriculturae' or 'De re rustica'] Palladius - [Rutilius Taurus AEmilianus] ; Paolo Zanotti (editor) Cookbooks - Food - Wine,Economics and Business,Gardening and Botany

xiv, 300 pages; Contemporary, or slightly later, half vellum over marbled paper-covered boards, titling slip in red leather lettered in gilt on the spine. Sepia endpapers printed in a complicated spidery pattern. This is a large paper copy of this edition -- the first appearance in print of this 13th c. Italian version of the text. The 1810 editor, Paolo Zanotti, has included variants from two MS. sources. The British Museum Catalogue asserts that there were fifty copies of this large paper edition. The late Roman-era writer on agricultural subjects known for centuries as "Palladius" also has several other names associated with his identity -- "Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius." As he was writing in the last part of the fourth century or the early part of the fifth century AD -- a time when the older "tria nomina" tradition had lapsed from its position as a standard -- it is not really possible to put those three or four names in any meaningful order. Perhaps "Palladius" should suffice. He was well known in antiquity; his main work: 'Opus agriculturae' is also known as 'De re rustica.' His book was divided into thirteen chapters, consisting of a general introduction, and a text recommending various tasks to be performed over the twelve months of the year. Palladius treats of field crops, vegetable gardens, fruit trees and other trees, and livestock. A fourteenth book devoted to care of animals and veterinary medicine was not discovered until three generaions after this elegant Italian edition was printed in 1810. There is much on grape cultivation and wine-making here. It is worth noting that Palladius' text was written at least two centuries after the whole Roman wine world was devasted, and transformed, by the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius -- which had a devastating effect on Campana's local trade. The destruction of Pompei also had a profound effect on the established long-distance maritime export and trade of wine through the greater Roman world. Ports, vineyards, and the warehouses that stored the vintage of 78 AD were destroyed. For various reasons of nature and law, it was all the more important for winemaking information from a knowledgeable source to be available to readers, some of whom were quite distant from Rome, itself. General advice about grape cultivation and wine were provided in several chapters of the first book (especially book I, chapter 18). And such advice is also given by the earlier Roman agricultural writers like Columella and Martialis. What is new in Palladius is the very detailed distribution of information and suggestions of necessary tasks into the full Calendar for the farmer or cultivator, in books 2-13. There is also specific information about olives and pressing olive oil, and beekeeping, as well. The Editio Princeps of the text appears to have been Nicolas Jenson's edition printed in Venice, 1472. We do not have a translator's name for this version of Palladius into old Italian. It is thought to have dated from about 1350. The text was taken (mostly) from a manuscript in the Laurentian Library in Florence, and was edited by Abbot Paolo Zanotti, working in Verona, who dedicated his work on this text to Abbot Giuseppe Pederzani [1740-1837]. This 1810 edition claims to be the first appearance of this Italian version of Palladius to have been printed. The present is particularly handsome, having been printed on large and particularly fine and crisp paper -- one of 50 such copies, according to the British Museum Catalogue. There is another such large paper copy in the Library of Congress in Washington DC. We have seen photographs of that copy (and another large paper copy elsewhere in the trade). Neither of those copies has the strange misspelling of the first word of the title that our copy displays. "VOLGARIZZAMENTO" -- as opposed to our title page reading "VOLGARIZGAMENTO." Large paper copies printed by fussy and careful printers sometimes have title pages and chapter heads reset to ma