• High Bids Win
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    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Book Press 10 1/2× 15 1/4" Platen , 2 1/2" Daylight.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: The Tubbs Mfg Co. wooden-type cabinet 27” w by 37” h by 22” deep.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: G.P.Gordon printing press 7” by 11” with treadle. Needs rollers, trucks, and grippers. Missing roller spring.
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    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: D & C Ventris curved wood type 2” tall 5/8” wide.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Wood Type 1 1/4” tall.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Triangles.
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    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Page & Co wood type 1 1/4” tall 1/4” wide.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Awt 578 type hi gauge.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Penline Flourishes.
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    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Penline Flourishes.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Quarter Case with Lead Cents and Pound Signs.
    High Bids Win, Nov. 20 – Dec. 5: Wooden type cabinet 27” w by 19” d by 38” h.
  • ALDE
    Bibliothèque médicale Arthur Tatossian
    December 11, 2024
    ALDE, Dec. 11: ALBINUS (BERNHARD SIEGFIED). Tabulæ Sceleti et Musculorum corporis humanum, Londres, 1749. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: BIDLOO (GOVARD). Anatomia humani corporis. Centum et quinque tabulis per artificiosiss. G. de Lairesse..., Amsterdam, 1685.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: BOURGERY (JEAN-MARC) – JACOB (NICOLAS-HENRI). Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’Homme comprenant la médecine opératoire, Paris, 1832. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE
    Bibliothèque médicale Arthur Tatossian
    December 11, 2024
    ALDE, Dec. 11: CALDANI (LEOPOLDO MARCANTONIO ET FLORIANO). Icones anatomicae, Venice, 1801-14. €5,000 to €6,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: CARSWELL (ROBERT). Pathological Anatomy. Illustrations of the elementary forms of disease, London, 1838. €5,000 to €6,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: CASSERIUS (JULIUS) [GIULIO CASSERIO]. De vocis auditusq. organis historia anatomica singulari fide methodo ac industria concinnata tractatis duobus explicate, Ferrara, 1600-1601. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE
    Bibliothèque médicale Arthur Tatossian
    December 11, 2024
    ALDE, Dec. 11: ESTIENNE (CHARLES). De dissectione partium corporis humani libri tres, Paris, 1545. €8,000 to €10,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: GAMELIN (JACQUES). Nouveau Recueil d'Ostéologie et de Myologie dessiné d'après nature... pour l’utilité des sciences et des arts, divisé en deux parties, Toulouse, 1779. €6,000 to €8,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: ROESSLIN (EUCHER). Des divers travaux et enfantemens des femmes et par quel moyen l'on doit survenir aux accidens…, Paris, 1536. €3,000 to €4,000.
    ALDE
    Bibliothèque médicale Arthur Tatossian
    December 11, 2024
    ALDE, Dec. 11: RUYSCH (FREDERICK). Thesaurus anatomicus - Anatomisch Cabinet, Amsterdam, 1701-1714. €3,000 to €4,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: VALVERDE (JUAN DE). Anatome corporis humani. Nunc primum a Michaele Michaele Columbo latine reddita, et additis novis aliquot tabulis exornata, Venetiis, 1589. €2,000 to €3,000.
    ALDE, Dec. 11: VESALIUS (ANDREAS). De humani Corporis Fabrica libri septem, Venetiis, 1568. €3,000 to €4,000.
  • Sotheby's
    Fine Books, Manuscripts & More
    Available for Immediate Purchase
    Sotheby’s: J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. 11,135 USD
    Sotheby’s: Edgar Allan Poe. The Raven and Other Poems, 1845. 33,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Leo Tolstoy, Clara Bow. War and Peace, 1886. 22,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1902. 7,500 USD
    Sotheby’s: F. Scott Fitzgerald. This Side of Paradise, The Great Gatsby, and Others, 1920-1941. 24,180 USD
  • Doyle, Dec. 5: Minas Avetisian (1928-1975). Rest, 1973. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington (1876-1973). Yawning Tiger, conceived 1917. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert M. Kulicke (1924-2007). Full-Blown Red and White Roses in a Glass Vase, 1982. $3,000 to $5,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). L’ATELIER DE CANNES (Bloch 794; Mourlot 279). The cover for Ces Peintres Nos Amis, vol. II. $1,000 to $1,500.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: LeRoy Neiman (1921-2012). THE BEACH AT CANNES, 1979. $1,200 to $1,800.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Richard Avendon, the suite of eleven signed portraits from the Avedon/Paris portfolio. $150,000 to $250,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). Flowers in Vase, 1985. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Nude, 1936. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Edward Weston (1886-1958). Juniper, High Sierra, 1937.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven J. Levn (b. 1964). Plumage II, 2011. $6,000 to $8,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 5: Steven Meisel (b. 1954). Madonna, Miami, (from Sex), 1992. $6,000 to $9,000.

Rare Book Monthly

Articles - February - 2023 Issue

Martial In Rome, the Power And The Glory

The Colosseum: Not fun and games, games and slaughter.

The Colosseum: Not fun and games, games and slaughter.

I went to Rome, Italy, and I took a picture of a 1671 edition of Martial’s epigrams inside the dreadful Colosseum. This place was once the showcase of the most powerful city on Earth; as you enter it in 2023, you’re almost deafened by the mute cries of 80,000 raging spectators. They were screaming with joy as people were murdered, raped or torn by wild beasts in front of their eyes. These circus games inspired several epigrams to Martial (40-104)—known as “the book of the circus games”. They are not recommended for soft readers.

 

Visiting the Colosseum is like visiting St Peter’s church in the Vatican. Those places are nothing but unapologetic displays of power. Everything there was designed to make you feel miserable. The cold breath of power blows on your neck as soon as you enter, as if to remind you how insignificant you are. Two thousands years or so later, notwithstanding technological or medical progress, or our travelling to the moon, the impact is still the same. It is a debauchery of means and money with a unique goal: showing who’s the master. “Let barbarian Memphis keep silence concerning the wonders of her pyramids,” Martial writes, “and let not Assyrian toil vaunt its Babylon. Let not the effeminate Ionians claim praise for their temple of the Trivian goddess (...). Every work of toil yields to Caesar's amphitheatre.1” It is the most visited site in Italy today. “What race is so distant from us, what race so barbarous, Caesar, as that from it no spectator is present in thy city? The cultivator of Rhodope is here (...): the Sarmatian nourished by the blood drawn from his steed, is here. (…) The Arabian has hastened hither, the Sabaeans have hastened (...). Though different the speech of the various races, there is but one utterance, when thou art hailed as the true father of thy country.” A pagan Tower of Babel, so to speak.

 

I had an “arena access” ticket, so I was permitted to step into the arena with a restricted amount of tourists. Here I was, walking in the footsteps of Carpophorus. He was Domitian’s protégé2, and a fearless hunter. “That which was the utmost glory of thy renown, Meleager, a boar put to flight, what is it? a mere portion of that of Carpophorus. He, in addition, planted his hunting-spear in a fierce rushing bear (...); he also laid low a lion (...); and with a wound from a distance, stretched lifeless a fleet leopard.” One day, a lion escaped its master’s grip and created panic among the patrons. Everybody ran away but Carpophorus, who jumped on it instead, and put it to death. What a spectacle indeed! I looked at the nearby seats behind me. They seem so close! The spectators could almost touch the many gladiators who died at their feet.

 

The circus games had a political dimension. Binging lions, rhinoceros (how powerful was that tusk to whom a bull was a mere ball!) or elephants from the ends of the empire was a way to display Caesar’s power. Even the wild beasts came to die for his glory. The floor of the arena is now gone, and we can see corridors underneath—the belly of the beast. Elevators would send the gladiators, the animals or their victims right in the middle of the battlefield. Representation was the key word of the games. “The pagan and cruel Romans,” our French translator warns before offering the poem entitled Pasiphae, “would often give inhuman and lewd spectacles in the Colosseum, to re-enact the Greek fables.” Pasiphae was Minos’ wife, and when the latter refused to sacrifice a white bull to Poseidon, the God retaliated. He made Minos’ wife fall in love with a bull. So passionate was Pasiphae that she hid inside a wooden cow covered with a cow skin. “The bull approached and started to copulate with it as if with a real cow,” Apollodorus writes. “The young woman then gave birth to the Minotaur.” Many questioned the truth of these fables, and re-enacting them in the Colosseum was a serious matter. “Believe that Pasiphae was enamoured of a Cretan bull: we have seen it,” Martial rejoices, “The old story has been confirmed,” meaning they had a woman publicly raped by a bull. Another wretch had the honour to re-enact the myth of Prometheus: “so has Laureolus, suspended on no feigned cross, offered his defenceless entrails to a Caledonian bear. His mangled limbs quivered, every part dripping with gore, and in his whole body no shape was to be round.” This Laureolus, Martial presumes, had “murdered his father, or assassinated his master, or maybe raped his mother.” Serves you right, you savage!

 

Man versus lions, leopards versus elephants, women versus beasts, or short-people fighting each other—it goes on and on. I was reading the epigram about those young men who were attacked by a loose lion. They were sweeping away the sand made thick with blood during an interlude. Then I noticed a modern Venus on my right. She was posing in the arena, holding her phone with a selfie-stick—looking for the best view on her body curves, the best pout. Not as much as a bull raping a woman, but this was a dreadful spectacle to behold. Unfortunately, there were thousands of Venuses in the Colosseum that day. Guess that when they post their best shots on social media, 80,000 spectators applauded. The ancient tyrants are gone, but the circus games go on, and the spectators are always asking for more.

 

Thibault Ehrengardt

 

1. The English translations are from a 1897 edition available online (www.tertullian.org).

2. The translator of our 1671 edition indicates that Martial is referring to the circus games given by Domitian. Yet, in his article Domitien, spectacles, supplices et cruauté, Cinzia Vismara writes (persee.fr): “The chronology of Martial’s Book of the Circus Games has only been confirmed recently (...). And these poems exclusively depict the games given by Titus to inaugurate the Colosseum.”


Posted On: 2023-02-02 12:41
User Name: chr.edwards

This all seems to me a bit oversensitive: it's getting on for 2000 years since people and animals were slaughtered in the Colosseum (not the Coliseum, by the way). And to compare it with St Peter's in the Vatican, which is certainly not intended to make the visitor miserable, is ridiculous. I suggest you save your indignation for modern atrocities, about which something can be done.


Posted On: 2023-02-02 20:41
User Name: ehrengardt

You're right. A woman raped by a bull in front of a delighted audience? Come on, man! A man ripped by a fierce beast while chained on a rock? Don't be a sissy. That was long ago, this is inaccurate, just like old dusty books I guess.

If you can't see the link between the Colosseum (pardon my English, will ask the editor to correct it) and St Peter's Church, never mind - they do. That's why they did all they could to put their name all over the place. And if I remember correctly, they tried to erect a church inside the place at one point.

Anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Means a lot to me, you now how sensitive I can be. :D


Posted On: 2023-02-06 23:52
User Name: bukowski

The Colosseum is not terrible. It is majestic and magnificent, regardless of how and for what it was used. Woke poseur!


Posted On: 2023-02-09 17:58
User Name: ehrengardt

"Regardless?" Guess, I'll have to keep on thinking without you that 2+2=4.
Have a majestic and magnificent day. ;)


Rare Book Monthly

  • Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    H. Schedel, Liber chronicarum, 1493. Est: € 25,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    P. O. Runge, Farben-Kugel, 1810. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Kandinsky, Klänge, 1913. Est: € 20,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    W. Burley, De vita et moribus philosophorum, 1473. Est: € 4,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. B. Valentini, Viridarium reformatum seu regnum vegetabile, 1719. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    PAN, 10 volumes, 1895-1900. Est: € 15,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. de Gaddesden, Rosa anglica practica medicinae, 1492. Est: € 12,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    M. Merian, Todten-Tanz, 1649. Est: € 5,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    D. Hammett, Red harvest, 1929. Est: € 11,000
    Ketterer Rare Books
    Auction November 25th
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    Book of hours, Horae B. M. V., 1503. Est: € 9,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    J. Miller, Illustratio systematis sexualis Linneai, 1792. Est: € 8,000
    Ketterer Rare Books, Nov. 25:
    F. Hundertwasser, Regentag – Look at it on a rainy day, 1972. Est: € 8,000
  • Gonnelli:
    Auction 55
    Antique prints, paintings and maps
    November 26st 2024
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, 23 animal plances,1641. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Stefano Della Bella, Boar Hunt, 1654. Starting price 180€
    Gonnelli: Crispijn Van de Passe, The seven Arts, 1637. Starting price 600€
    Gonnelli: Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, La Maschera è cagion di molti mali, 1688. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Biribissor’s game, 1804-15. Starting price 2800€
    Gonnelli: Nicolas II de Larmessin, Habitats,1700. Starting price 320€
    Gonnelli: Miniature “O”, 1400. Starting price 1800€
    Gonnelli: Jan Van der Straet, Hunt scenes, 1596. Starting Price 140€
    Gonnelli: Massimino Baseggio, Costantinople, 1787. Starting price 480€
    Gonnelli: Kawanabe Kyosai, Erotic scene lighten up by a candle, 1860. Starting price 380€
    Gonnelli: Duck shaped dropper, 1670. Starting price 800€
  • Doyle, Dec. 6: An extensive archive of Raymond Chandler’s unpublished drafts of fantasy stories. $60,000 to $80,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: RAND, AYN. Single page from Ayn Rand’s handwritten first draft of her influential final novel Atlas Shrugged. $30,000 to $50,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Ernest Hemingway’s first book with interesting provenance. Three Stories & Ten Poems. $20,000 to $30,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Hemingway’s second book, one of 170 copies. In Our Time. $15,000 to $25,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A finely colored example of Visscher’s double hemisphere world map, with a figured border. $12,000 to $18,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Raymond Chandler’s Olivetti Studio 44 Typewriter. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: Antonio Ordóñez's “Suit of Lights” owned by Ernest Hemingway. $10,000 to $20,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A remarkable Truman archive featuring an inscribed beam from the White House construction. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: The fourth edition of Audubon’s The Birds of America. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: The original typed manuscript for Chandler’s only opera. The Princess and the Pedlar: An Entirely Original Comic Opera. $8,000 to $12,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A splendidly illustrated treatise on ancient Peru and its Incan civilization. $7,000 to $10,000.
    Doyle, Dec. 6: A superb copy of Claude Lorrain’s Liber Veritatis from Longleat House. $5,000 to $8,000.

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