8vo. 2 parts in 1: (XLIV),1024,(32, index) p.; frontispiece, 12 plates. Vellum 21 cm (Ref: STCN ppn 241753686; Schweiger 2,980; Dibdin 2,443; Moss 2,633 (corrects Dibdin); Fabricius/Ernesti 2,460: ' bene sane de Suetonio meritus'; Graesse 6,523; Ebert 21938: 'Eine durch neue krit. und exeget. Ausstattung sich sehr empfehlende Handausgabe'; 'Spoelder p. 685, Utrecht 5) (Details: Nice prize copy, without the prize. 6 thongs laced through the joints. Back with 7 gilt bands and rosettes. Boards with gilt floral borders, corner pieces, and the coat of arms of Utrecht. Frontispiece of H. van der Mij and J.v.d. Spijk, depicting a statue of 'Roma triumphatrix' on a pedestal, at the foot of which sits 'Historia' (Clio), pointing with her goose pen at the name of Oudendorp. Title in red and black. Engraved printer's mark on the title, a resting Athena, motto: 'Tuta sub Aegide Pallas'. Engraved coat of arms of Willem Karel Hendrik Friso, better known als prince of Orange William IV at the beginning of the dedicatio. 12 engraved plates with portraits of Roman emperors. At the end 4 pages with a stocklist of 'Auctores Classici' available at Luchtmans') (Condition: Without the prize. Vellum soiled and age-toned. All four decorative silk fastening ties gone) (Note: The Roman historian Suetonius, born c. 69 A.D, is the most influential and best known biographer in the Latin language. He was appointed under the emperors Hadrian and Trajan to the secretarial posts of 'a studiis', 'a bibliothecis', and 'ab epistulis' of the palace administration, jobs that gave him access to the imperial archives. His Lives of the Emperors 'De vita Caesarum' gives the biographies of 12 emperors, from Caesar, the founder of the imperial line, to Domitian. 'Suetonius, like Plutarch, believed that a person's character could be revealed in small and insignificant details'. He 'organized his Lives by topics (per species) rather than chronologically' (The Classical Tradition, Cambr. Mass. 2010, p. 912/13). Beyond simplicity he has no stylistic pretentions. He quotes verbatim from documents he knew, and shows critical ability. 'The great number of scurrilous anecdotes in most of the lives may be due to the nature of his sources'. (OCD, 2nd ed. p. 1020/1) Suetonius was read in the Middle Ages. Einhard wrote a biography of Charlemagne along the lines of a Life of Suetonius. From the Renaissance onward he was neglected, until the great edition of 1672 of Graevius. Gibbon praised this Roman historian for his strict dedication to historical truth. Nowadays 'historians of Rome take him more seriously than do literary critics' (The Classical Tradition, Cambr. Mass., 2010, p. 913) § The Dutch classicist Frans van Oudendorp, 1696-1761, is called by Sandys 'the last of the great Latinists of the third age of scholarship'. (History of Classical scholarship' 2,454) He was a student at Leiden of Jacobus Gronovius, Jacobus Perizonius and Petrus Burmannus Sr., and in 1740 he was appointed professor of history and rhetoric at his own University. He produced a series of important editions of Latin classics, of Julius Sequens, Lucanus, Fronto, Caesar and Apuleius. (Van der Aa 14, 267/68) In the preface of his Suetonius Oudendorp declares that he is not a devotee of any text in particular, (nulli editioni addictus), but that he chose to follow the editions published by Graevius (1672, 1691, 1697 and 1702) and by Gronovius (1698), and that he followed his own judgement. He added also observations of several leading scholars, Casaubon, J.A. Ernesti, Petrus Burmannus Sr. and others. He consulted also 'haud sine fructu' several manuscripts for 'variae lectiones'. Oudendorp thanked in the preface also his Utrecht colleague Carolus Andreas Duker, 1660-1752, for lending him old editions of Suetonius, and for sending him his annotations for many places, especially the Lives of the Flavii) (Collation: pi2, *-2*8, 3*4; A-3V8, 3X2) (Photographs on request)