Vol. 2 of 2-volume set. 8vo., contemporary full leather, with wood-engraved printer’s colophon to title page, pp. [2], 899, [with index unpaginated, c. 100 pp.]. Binding heavily chipped, hinges cracking, head and heel worn away, leather coming loose from boards and spine, front endpaper partly detached, text block otherwise clean and very good. Printed by the celebrated Elsevir press in Amsterdam. Volume 2 of the Flemish humanist Justus Lipsius’s edition of the complete works of Tacitus (first published in Antwerp in 1574), which was thought to be the most reliable edition in its day and is now the basis of modern editions. Lipsius (1557-1606) was one of the leading intellectuals in late sixteenth-century Europe, his most famous work being De Constantia in publicis malis of 1583. The book, modelled after the dialogues of Seneca, was pivotal in establishing an accommodation of Stoicism and Christianity which became known as Neostoicism. Text in Latin.
