SERDONATI, Francesco.

De' fatti d'arme de' Romani, libri tre. Ne' quali si tratta di tutte la battaglie, & imprese, fatte da Romani, dalla edification di Roma, sino alla declination dell'imperio. Raccolti da Tito Livio, Plutarco, Dione, Macrobio, Volterrano, & altri gravisimi historici. Et novamente dati in luce da m. Francesco Serdonati firentino.

Venice, Giordano Ziletti [colophon: for Christoforo Ziletti], 1572. Small 4to (210 x 150 mm), pp. [xvi], 170, [6]; light damp-stain in last few leaves, but otherwise an excellent copy in early vellum (probably English), small gilt arabesques in centre of covers; slightly soiled; gilt edges; from the library of the dukes of Manchester at Kimbolton Castle, with its nineteenth-century shelf-label. First edition. Serdonati’s book is an example of how scholarship in the course of the sixteenth century gradually reconstructed the ancient military arts and began to look for sources beyond Vegetius. The ‘painstaking historical techniques for such a task were not readily acquired or easily deployed. The historiography of the reconstruction of the Greek and Roman armies has, I believe, yet to be written: but it is clearly important for our understanding of the paradox whereby generation after generation of scholars – Machiavelli included – looked to the Roman army for military perfection, yet were unable to comprehend how that army really functioned at different times and in differing conditions’ (Anglo, Machiavelli p. 526).BL STC p. 622. Not in Adams.

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