Philosophy.- Poesis philosophica, collation: *⁸, a-n⁸*, complete with blank leaf n8, 222, [2] pp., text in Greek and Latin, woodcut printer's device on title, woodcut decorated initial on fol. c.*2r, numerous headpieces, front pastedown with illegible note in an early hand, early Greek note on fol. d7r, recto of rear flyleaf with a few fragments by Empedocles in ink, written almost certainly by François-Séraphin Régnier Desmarais and derived from Aulus Gellius, Clemens Alexandrinus, Porphyrius and Jamblichus, contemporary vellum, a little rubbed at corners and upper edge of lower cover, slightly soiled, grey cloth drop-back box, 8vo, 166 x 99mm., [Geneva], Henri Estienne, 1573.

⁂ A small octavo volume of little more than 200 pages, but of notable importance in the history of Western culture and in the revival of the splendour of the Presocratic philosophy. This is the editio princeps of the poems and fragments of the first philosophers of nature or scientists of the Western tradition, Empedocles, Xenophanes, Parmenides of Elea, Critias and prominent figures of the Pythagorean tradition. The Genevan collection was edited by the learned printer Henry Estienne and also contains the Carmina aurea ascribed at the time to Pythagoras, the Hymni of Orpheus, and several epistles attributed to Heraclitus, Democritus, and Hippocrates.

"As to the Presocratics, I assert that there is the most perfect possible continuity of thought between their theories and the later developments in physics; whether they are called philosophers, or prescientists, or scientists matters very little. [...] Few philosophers or scientists are aware of the influence exerted by some of the oldest ideas of Greek philosophy and Greek science upon our most advanced scientific theories: upon classical physics and chemistry, relativity, quantum theory, genetics, and even molecular biology" (K.R. Popper, Back to the Presocratics, pp. 7-8). The learned printer Henri Estienne based this edition on reports and quotations from ancient and Christian sources, following a method which in 1903 was applied by Hermann Diels for his standard collection Fragmente der Vorsokratiker.

This copy belonged to the poet François-Séraphin Régnier Desmarais (1632-1713), secretary of the Parisian Académie des Sciences and translator of Homer and Anacreon, who wrote in ink of the front flyleaf a few fragments by Empedocles, not included by Estienne in this collection.

Provenance: François-Séraphin Régnier Desmarais (1632-1713; ownership inscription on title-page); Mark Pattison (1813-1884; inscription on recto of front flyleaf), Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and author in 1875 of a biography of Isaac Casaubon, Henri Estienne's son-in-law. Also on recto of front flyleaves ownership inscriptions 'Dr. Ferran' and 'Francis R. [?] Gift of D. [?] June 1958'.

Literature: Adams P, 1682; Renouard Estienne I, 140.8; Schreiber, 187; Chaix-Dufour-Moeckli, p. 79; Reverdin, Livres grecs, p. 222; K.R. Popper, "Back to Presocratics", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society", 59 (1958-59), pp. 1-24; G.W. Most, À la recherche du texte perdu. On Collecting, in Fragmentsammlungen philosophischer Texte der Antike, Göttingen 1998, pp. 1-15.