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MACROBIUS, A. T. Macrobii Aurelii Theodosii Viri Consularis in Somnium Scipionis Li-bri Duo: Et Septem Eiudem Libri Saturna Lioru…Apud Sanctam Coloniam Anno M. D. XXI. Cologne: Eucharius Cervicornus, August 1521. Small folio ( 31 x 22.5 cm.) in 19th c. quarter red morocco, marbled paper over boards with considerable wear but tight and stable. 19th marbled paper. P.l. & blank, eng. t-p in contemp. color with dedicatory poems on verso; 4 unnumbered leaves with dedication & contents & errata page. Text leaves paginated in roman numerals, II-CVLVI. Numerous pagination errors but complete by signatures. Moderate worming in early signatures. World map in contemp. color (14.7 x 13.5 cm); numerous diagrams & decorative initials, some in contemp. color. Quite extensively annotated in three early hands; early ownership signature on t-p: “Theodonici Hasenstenij”? Small, free-standing sheet of paper with notes in an early hand. Paper overall lightly toned but crisp; near excellent overall. An important edition and exceptional copy of a work that influenced geographic and cosmological thinking in the Age of Discovery. This edition contains the largest iteration of Macrobius’s world, and it is here in full, original color; this is the first example of the map thus colored we have encountered. When it first appeared in the Brescia edition in 1483, the Macrobius world map was among the earliest of the world in printed form. The book’s elaborate woodcut title page and some its diagrams are similarly colored. Also, of great bibliographic interest, this copy is liberally annotated in at least three early hands, with instances of notations apparently commenting on others. This 1521 Cologne edition is considered an important one, as it was the first edited by Arnoldus Vesaliensis (the classicist Arnold Haldrein of Wesel). The text of the fifth century AD philosopher and grammarian, Macrobius, was a popular and influential source for its geographical, cosmological and other theories. Although the work is nominally a commentary on Cicero’s “Dream of Scipio,” a segment in his De re publica, it was valued in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as a source of Neoplatonic, i.e. classical Greek learning in the areas of geography, cosmography and other scientific and mathematical subjects. It is also replete with Macrobius’s own philosophical musings; he, for example, argued that based on the nature of the earth’s geography, conquest of other lands is futile and for the conceptual existence of a large, inhabited continent, i.e. the Americas, on the other side of the globe. This work’s impact continued to be felt in the Renaissance through its numerous printed editions, the first of which appeared in Venice in 1472 (though without the map); editions of the work appeared as late as 1574, and Macrobius-influenced world maps were seen as late as the 17th century. Macrobius's world map largely embodied the classical view of the world, traceable as far back as Homer, of a spherical earth composed of four insular land masses surrounded by a constantly moving ocean stream. The map shows only the hemisphere containing the then known world consisting of Europe, Africa and Asia in the northern portion and the Antipodes below. The map also illustrates five zonal, climatic bands, also derived from classical Greek geography. Suarez in an interesting study of Macrobius (see below) notes how his work impacted the Age of Discovery in various ways. He observes that the “fact that Macrobius presented a circumnavigable Africa and an open Indian Ocean helped inspire Portuguese confidence in their own designs to sail south and east around Africa and ultimately on to the orient.” Suarez elsewhere explains how Macrobius’s conception of the earth influenced early notions of the Pacific Ocean. “The Pacific was ‘mapped’ conceptually by Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, … Although Macrobius, of course knew nothing of Americas, his concept formed a hypothetical, autonomous ‘Pacific’ ocean belt. An aesthetic and philosophic construct, the planet’s landmasses were balanced.” This edition of the map does differ from earlier ones in a few notable ways that can be considered updates. “Armenia” now appears, while “Babel” does not. Spain with Portugal, and Italy, here each take on peninsular form, however crudely. As on the early editions of the map, Great Britain (“Britania”) and Scandinavia (“Thil”) are represented by crude island forms to the northwest of continental Europe. This edition of the map, as do a few of the earlier ones, has nicely cut windheads. There is a considerable literature on the Macrobian world view. Carlos Sanz (El primer mapa del mundo…, Real Sociedad Geográfica, B 455, Madrid, 1966) has studied the significance of the map in regard to Quirós and subsequent voyages of discovery into the southern hemisphere. Beaglehole in his edition of the journals of Cook has written of 'the circular maps of another cycle, that of Macrobius… [who] goes rather further than Cicero or St. Isidore; for whereas Cicero thought the southern zone habitable, and St. Isidore noted that there 'the Antipodes are fabulously said to dwell', Macrobius considered that the heat of the torrid zone would forever keep men from providing any proof. There however is the neatly balanced round of the Macrobian map: in the middle the broad Bath of Ocean, bounded on either side by the wavy coastline of an insular continent, northern and southern, snugly fitted into the waters of its half-circle. Each is divided into three bands: the first, rather narrow, facing on the Alveus Oceani and labelled Perusta - 'burnt up'… So seductive, in the field of science, was harmony, symmetry, balance, the fitness of things; so difficult has it been for the geographer, as for other men, to wait on facts. So little, one is tempted cynically to add, has it mattered in the long run…' (Beaglehole, Journals, I, pp. xxv-vi). Book: Adams M-60; VD-16 M-49. World Map: Suarez, T. Shedding the Veil, No. 3, pp. 13-17; Early Mapping of the Pacific, p. 28, p. 77, Fig. 71 (this copy); cf. Campbell, T. The Earliest Printed Maps, no. 87, pp. 114-117; Shirley 13; The World Encompassed 7 & 8.
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