Dante Alighieri.- Lactantius (Lucius Coelius Firmianus) Opera, second edition, the second book by these printers, collation: *¹² 1-11¹⁰ 12⁸ 13-16¹⁰ 17¹² 18-20¹⁰ 220 leaves complete with initial and final blank, 38 lines, Roman and Greek letter, opening page of text with 6-line initial ‘M’ in blue, red and green, heightened with gold and with decorative three-sided white vine-stem border in similar colours and gold, 8 further fine 6-line initials again in similar colours and gold, many 2-line initials and paraphs supplied in red and blue (the blue sometimes faded), chapter headings by large initials added in manuscript in red ink, early ink marginalia, often faded, later ink annotations to initial and final blank, some staining, especially towards beginning, and foxing, worming, mostly marginal but affecting a few words of text at beginning, becoming single marginal hole through most of book, wide margins, later diced russia, gilt, joints repaired, rubbed, preserved in modern suede-lined brown straight-grain morocco drop-back box, folio (329 x 229mm.), Rome, Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz, 1468.

⁂ A complete and large copy of this handsomely printed work - the second from the great printers Sweynheym and Pannartz in Rome. This edition has Lactantius's poem on the phoenix at the end, together with extracts from Ovid's Metamorphoses and Dante's Commedia on the phoenix (the first appearance of Dante in print) and the ancient Easter hymn of Venantius Fortunatus, "Salve festa dies".

After working briefly at Subiaco, at the request of Giovanni Andrea Bussi, in 1467 the two German proto-typographers moved to Rome and set up a printing workshop in the Palazzo Massimo behind the Piazza Navona. The first work printed in Rome, of which a certain date is known, is Cicero's Epistolae ad familiaris, which was followed by this edition of Lactantius. These early editions are almost always published in folio and usually in a range of between 275 and 300 copies each.

Literature: BMC IV, 4; Goff L2; HC 9807; GW M16542; Bod-inc L-003.