On the Cave of the Nymphs

By decree of the Senate, it is protected. The title is succeeded again by a brief preface of Asulanus; after the preface come the Scholia, with pages numbered as in the Iliad. At the end it is thus: AT VENICE, IN THE HOUSE OF ALDUS AND HIS FATHER-IN-LAW ANDREW ASULANUS, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1528.

From this it is evident that this edition, if one speaks properly, consists of two volumes; the former of which was published in the year 1521, the latter in 1528; yet it is one and the same edition: and the booklet of Porphyry, which is appended to the first volume, can thus be said to have been published once at the expense of Aldus and Asulanus.

The third is the Strasbourg edition of 1539, in octavo, likewise with the lesser Scholia; under this title: HOMER'S INTERPRETER. Fabricius mentions the same; but it seems to have been printed from the Venetian one and is not of great importance. (*)

A little before this time, the Works of Homer had appeared at the Basel presses, in Greek, with Scholia added: in the year 1535, in folio. Since the copies of these were quickly sold out, at the instigation of the great Joachimus Camerarius, the Basel printers undertook a new edition similar to the former and brought it to light in the year 1541 in the same format; this edition, which Fabricius did not mention, was enriched with the Homeric Questions of our philosopher and the booklet On the Cave of the Nymphs. I have seen it and compared it in the Leiden Library, noted here and there in the margin by F. Junius. And this is the first Basel edition of our booklet.

Two years later, the same edition appeared provided with a new title, namely in the year 1543, which follows the former step by step; and perhaps the title was only renewed, and it was applied to the remaining copies.

() C. Gesner also mentions it in his Bibliotheca, page 569, where he testifies that the booklet of Porphyry* was published at Strasbourg in 1539 and separately in quarto at Rome or Florence. The latter of these is without a doubt the primary Roman edition, published in octavo, not quarto, which was later also omitted by Simler in the Gesnerian Epitome of the Library.