Xenophon - [Aldine] ... Opera Xenophontis - 1511

HISTORY; PHILOSOPHY; ALDINE COUNTERFEITS; TYPOGRAPHY) XENOPHON ()
Xenophon in hoc volumine continentur infrascripta opera Xenophontis. Paedia Cyri Persarum regis. De venatione. De re publica & de legibus lacedaemoniorum. De regis Agesilai Lacedaemoniorum laudibus. Apologia pro Socrate. Opusculum de tyramnide. No Printer (Lyon) (colophon: Expensis honesti viri Bartholomei Trot, 1511)
§ 8vo (160x95); [212] leaves, signature A-Y8, AA-EE8, FF4 (D4 signed as C4). Title page with woodcut printer’s device (fleur-de-lys ) printed in red. Contemporary vellum. (some professional restoration on spine) Few pages slightly browned, last two leaves skillfully restored, good and well preserved copy.
Second edition of a Lyonnaise counterfeit of Aldus print, previously published without date; counterfait of the Aldine edition of 1503. The italic type, engraved by Francesco Griffo, were introduced for the first time in 1501 by Aldus, who obtained a privilege for it from the city of Venice. The privilege, however, never prevented the illegal printing, using the same types, in Italy and abroad; the first counterfeit was produced as soon as 1503 by the Giunta in Florence and in the same year Aldus himself complained of the inferior quality of the Lyons counterfeit, printed by Balthasar da Gabiano, an Italian printer established in Lyon. Barthélemy Trot, also from Italy, around 1491 moved to Lyon, where he worked with Bonino de Boninis. About 1511 Trot became associated with Balthasar da Gabiano and together they printed several Aldine counterfeits, Trot’s production characterized by the red fleur-de-lys. On the basis of several typographical characteristics, Shaw lists six groups of counterfeits; the present edition is included in group IV A and is the first dated edition with Trot’s name (Shaw, n. 49); the previous edition, undated, belongs to group III and is tentatively dated by Shaw to 1504. Translator of the works were, as stated in the colophon, Translated by Francesco Filelfo, Omnibonus Leonicenus, and Leonordo Bruni.
 David J. Shaw, The Lyons Counterfeit of Aldus's Italic Type: A New Chronology In: D.V. Reidy (ed.) The Italian Book 1485-1800 Studies presented to Dennis E. Rhodes on his 70th birthday, 1993, pp.117-133, no. 49; Renouard n. 36 and n. 20 for the first Lyon edition; Baudrier, pp. 409-413 (about B. Trot), p. 421-422 (this edition); A. F. Johnson Type designs: their history and development London, Grafton & Co., 1934, pp. 123 ff.