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SCHEFFER, Johannes. Dissertatio de varietate navium. Strasbourg, n.p., 1643.
4to. [19 x 16cm], (16) ff. including title page, (2) ff. of plates interpolated from another work (see below). Disbound, spine slightly damaged, some toning, minimal foxing; a very good copy.
$950 Very rare first edition of this nautical history describing the structures of ancient ships based on a multitude of classical poetic and prose sources, including Horace, Catullus, Ovid, Virgil, Caesar, Plautus, Thucydides, and Appianius. Scheffer (1621-1679), born near Strasbourg, immigrated to Sweden where he became a professor at Uppsala and one of the most important Swedish humanists of his day. This academic dissertation is Scheffer’s first known work, and writing it either expressed or sparked his passion for maritime antiquity: he published a number of works on the topic, including De militia navali veterum ... ad historiam graecam latinamque utiles (1654) and De antiquorum torquibus syntagma (1707).
The work’s collation conforms to the copies we have located, but the lack of any imprint information as well as the work’s rarity suggest that it may have been privately published. The two engraved, interpolated plates show 30 coins and seals from Thuringia (central Germany).
No copy listed on OCLC and apparently no American copy. We have located copies at Wolfenbüttel, Cambridge, the BNF, Leipzig, Tübingen.
* Wolfenbüttel record.
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