[...] Pro declaratione picturae sive descriptionis Graeciae Sophiani, libri septem. [...]

Basiliae [Basel], per Ioannem Oporinum,, [1550]. Folio. pp. [xii], 297, [xv]. Lacks final blank and two folding tables at the end. With historiated woodcut initials. Some light toning and spotting. Signature P slightly loose. (Bound with Casaubon’s Commentary and notes from his excellent 1587 edition of Strabo, printed by Vignon in Geneva. pp. [viii], 223. With woodcut title border. Wormtrack to lower inner margin from prelims to E, and paper restoration to the upper margin of the last dozen or so leaves affecting text. Some waterstaining.) Later vellum, a little minor wear. The first edition of Gerbel’s description of Greece was a slender volume of 80 pages printed in 1545 to accompany maps by the Corfiot emigre Nicolaos Sophianos. No early editions of the maps survive, and they are known only from the woodcut re-issue of 1602 and an engraved version of 1552. This second edition of Gerbel’s work is to all intents and purposes a different book, expanded into seven sections: a general introduction to Greece is followed by chapters on Macedonia, Epirus, Achaea, the Peloponesse and Magna Graecia, concluding with a short section on the preparation of the virga with an illustration for the measurement of latitude and longitude. Gerbel (1485-1560) was professor of law in Vienna, and was regarded as an authority on the history of Greece. On page 255 (I4) is an egraved vignette showing Arion, cithera in hand, riding a dolphin. The story is that the poet was travelling by sea when the crew decided to kill him for his money. They ordered him to jump overboard, but not before allowing him to play one final song. He was rescued by a passing dolphin. This vignette appears to have been the basis for the device used with the Oporinus imprint, and by associated printers in Basel such as Gemusaeus. Adams G-480. Book