Editions of ancient authors from the book collection of the Radziwills of the Nyasvizh fee tail

Abstract

The article is devoted to the identification and analysis of books by ancient authors published in the 16th–19th centuries of the recent recreated in the second half of the 19th century book collection of the Radziwill princes of the Nyasvizh fee tail. The origins of this privately owned book collection on the current territory of Belarus go back to the 16th century. The article presents an analysis and brief description of the identified copies. More than 130 editions have been identified, including works of ancient poets (Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid), fabulists (Aesop), rhetoricians (Cicero), historians (Thucydides, Xenophon, Caesar, Cornelius Nepos, Sallust, Livy, Plutarch, Eutropius), theologians (Justin Martyr, Jerome), philosophers (Plato, Seneca), playwrights (Terence) in both ancient (Latin and Greek) and modern European languages (French, German, Polish, Italian). The books of ancient authors in the collection reflect the diversity of European book publishing of the 16th–19th centuries: editions of the printing houses of France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth are presented here. A special place is given to the author's and owner's records of books left in the margins based on materials from the fund currently stored in the Central Scientific Library named after Yakub Kolas of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. The presented variety of editions of ancient Greek and Roman authors demonstrates the constant interest of the Radziwill princes in the ancient literary heritage underlying European culture.