Thucydide

rif. 123901 — London Printed by Andrew Clark for Charles Harper and are to be sold by him at the Flower-de-luce over against St. Dunstans Church in Fleet-street 1676. . Second edition 'much corrected and amended'; folio 33 x 21 cm; additional engraved title 2 folding engraved maps 3 further engraved plates including one folding woodcut initials letter title printed in red and black inscription in pen and blue ink to title-page upper margin textblock toned with occasional spotting; contemporary blind-ruled calf rebacked and the covers restored very good; 48 357 11pp. The final lifetime edition of Hobbes' English-language translation of Thucydides' history of the Peloponnesian War 431-404 BC fought between the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and the Delian League of Athens. 'Hobbes 1588-1679 was forty when he completed this translation the first in English directly from the Greek but held it back for some time doubting whether he would get readers enough but published it eventually deciding to be content with "the few and better sort". Forty years later in Vita Carmine Expressa he said that he had written it so that his contemporaries might learn from the fate of Athenian democracy how much wiser one man is than the mass of men' MacDonald & Hargreaves. Complete with folding engraved maps of 'Antient Greece' annotated by Hobbes himself and 'Antient Sicele' and engraved plates depicting 'Plataea' 'The Campe of the Lacedemonians.' and the folding engraved view of 'Syracuse besieged by the Atheniana'. ESTC R11589; MacDonald & Hargreaves 4. London, Printed by Andrew Clark for Charles Harper, and are to be sold by him, at the Flower-de-luce over against St. Dunstans C unknown