Libro di Messala Corvino, Oratore desertissimo, a Ottaviano Augusto, della progenie sua. Nuovamente tradotto de Latino in volgare

4to. pp. [24]. Signatures: a8 b4. Olive green morocco Woodcut compartment surrounding title page text with Saint George slaying the dragon. Final page blank. Translator (Brother Andrea Lancianese) from British Library General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1975. London & New York, 1979-87.

First vernacular edition of this work on the offspring of Augustus, Emperor of Rome, a 16th-century production falsely attributed to Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus. The address to Augustus, on his ancestry and the origin of Rome, is assigned by some to the twelfth century, some to the fifeenth. After its first appearance in print (Bib# 4102605/Fr# 31 in this collection) it was frequently treated as a supposed survival from Messala’s lost work on eminent Roman families (Bib# 4102605/Fr# 32), but was firmly discredited by R. Sabbadini (Le scoperte dei codici latini e greci ne'secoli 14 e 15. Florence, 1905, I, p. 178), among others. See W. Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum: ein Versuch ihrer Deutung, München, 1971, p., 318; N.F. Haym, Biblioteca Italiana. Venice, 1728, p. 149, nr. 16, who calls the author apocryphical.

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