Beschreibung:

The Antonine Itinerary, with its additions for maritime travel and ports, decorated humanist manuscript, in Latin on paper [Italy, or perhaps Spain, c. 1500] 136 leaves (plus 2 paper endleaves at each end), complete, collation: i10, ii8, iii-viii6, ix6 (probably), x6 (probably), xi2, entries in a single large column of 26 lines in a fine and ordered late humanist script, entirely in ornamental capitals, titles of which city-route to Rome is in question in red capitals centred on page, small contemporary or near-contemporary corrections made by overlaying small sections of paper (paper unable to support erasure of mistakes and allow for writing over affected section), first leaf with margins cut away and replaced perhaps a century after creation of book (this leaf discoloured and this perhaps to restore damaged edges of leaves), some smudges of red paint to borders of some leaves, scribbled late sixteenth- seventeenth-century notes in Latin on pp. 9, 45 and 103-05, paginated in seventeenth- or eighteenth-century (‘1-136’) by same hand that added notes in Spanish to last endleaf, small area of worm damage to back pasteboard and endleaves there, else in good and presentable condition with wide and clean margins, 325 by 242mm., seventeenth- or early eighteenth-century limp parchment over pasteboards (made up from leaves of a seventeenth-century text), some worming, and splits and tears to parchment at edges of boards, remnants of two tags on outer upright edge of boards and title on spine in ink, in fitted cloth covered case A handsome Renaissance copy of this fascinating travel text, mapping out the entirety of the Roman Empire; and to the best of our knowledge the only manuscript copy to come to the market since records began Provenance: 1. Copied in either Italy or Spain from a manuscript exemplar (the text was printed in Paris in 1512, but there are enough textual variants here to show that it is independent of that). There are no watermarks beyond chainlines, and no other features to help with localisation. The script shows little Spanish influence, but the volume has a long Spanish provenance (see below). If produced during the later years of the Crown of Aragon, especially under the reigns of Alfonso V (r. 1416-58) and the great humanist patron Ferdinand II (r. 1475-1504) when the capital was moved to Naples, then the potential differences may be imperceptible. 2. Don Andres de Valdecañas of Lucena, Andalucia, with his eighteenth-century printed ex libris pasted to head of first leaf: “Soy de D. Andres de Valdecañas, vecino de la ciudad de Lucena”. He was a ‘regidor’ (council member) of Lucena and an antiquarian, who commissioned a history of the town in 1774. He probably obtained the present manuscript in Spain, as the section of Hispania is the most heavily annotated in a hand most probably predating his ownership. 3. Private Swiss collection. Text: This text stands nearly alone in the history of Classical literature as almost the sole surviving example of its genre. It is a form of tabulated word map, or practical geographical guide, explaining, much as an underground train map does today, the order of safe stopping places between two given towns. Specifically, it details the routes between Rome and the cities of the Empire in the third century AD., as well as the friendly mansiones on those routes, and was originally intended to guide troop movements. Here there are 225 routes between Rome and towns and cities in the Mediterranean (Tripoli, Sardinia, Corsica), Italy, the land of Arabia ‘beyond the Nile’ (ie. Egypt), Germania, Gaul, Byzantium, Hispania, Aquitaine and Britain. The capital ‘M.P.’ that follows each placename along the respective routes, marks “millia passuum” or ‘Roman miles’, and is followed by a number in Roman numerals. Interestingly, the routes for Egypt most probably chart the movements of Emperor Caracalla’s proposed visit of 214-15. The last two texts here are common companions to the Antonine Itiner