Voyages d’Antenor en Grèce et en Asie, avec des notions sur l’Égypte

First of 3 vols. in 8vo. pp. XVI, 536. Signatures: [π]2 *6 A-X8. Original smooth mottled calf. Spines with red and green labels. Each volume has a frontispiece.

First edition (of some thirty in French, plus numerous translations) of this early historical novel, seemingly modeled on the immensely popular fictive ‘Voyage de jeune Anacharsis en Grèce’ of Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1788, seven volumes and atlas), set in the fourth century B.C.). In his Avant-Propos, Étienne-François de Lantier (1734-1826) recounts his discovery of the ‘Antenor’ text, written on ‘un rouleau très-volumineux, dans l’idiòme grec,’ in the ruins of a house at Herculaneum, while searching instead for fragments of celebrated classical authors (Polybius, Sallust, Tacitus, Livy, et al.). An English translation of 1799, also in 3 volumes, contains some ‘additional notes’ by the translator.

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