[42], 670 pp. Wood-engraved vignette on the title and a few wood-engraved initials. 9¾x7, contemporary full vellum, elaborate blind-stamped design graces both the front and rear covers, including 15 compartments with various personages illustrated and a Latin motto or phrase with each, also three concentric rectangular panels, large raised spine bands, inked lettering on spine. First Wolff Edition.

The Tres Libri comprises three historically important Cicero texts – De Senectute, De Amicitia, and Somnum Scipionis. The Wolff commentaries in this edition sets this apart from the earlier printed editions of the same titles by Cicero. Hieronymus Wolff (1516-1580), a pupil of Melanchthon and Camerarius at Wittenberg, was a professor of Greek and the rector of the Augsburg gymnasium, from 1557 until his death. He was also a leading classical scholar, noted for important editions of the works of Isocrates and Demosthenes. Latin text, with extensive passages in Greek. Scarce, with no records found at any American institution of this edition and only three copies located of the later 1569 issue in U.S. libraries. The present volume when compared to a copy of the later issue housed in the Houghton Library at Harvard shows sections bound in a different order and, of course, different information on the title page. Ownership inscription in Latin on the front pastedown dated 1657 and a later owner’s inscription dated 1749 on the title page.