Enlarged and corrected second edition of Strabo's Geographika including the notes by the French scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614): one of the earliest and most important scientific treatises on historical geography. It contains the Greek text together with the Latin translation by Wilhelm Xylander (1532-1576) and is followed by Casaubon's notes. "Casaubon was but 28 years of age when he published his first celebrated edition of Strabo [in 1587]... The [present] second edition, published by Frederick Morel at Paris, is much more accurate and splendid than the first" (Dibdin). Together with the works of Ptolemy and Solinus, Strabo's Geographika constitutes the first attempt at a unified treatise of geographical knowledge. It was first printed in 1516 by the Aldine press at Venice. Strabo visited Egypt and sailed up the Nile in 25 BC. Books 15 and 16 are devoted entirely to the Orient in general and Arabia in particular, while the final book discusses Egypt and Libya.
With two bookplates on paste-down. Title-page browned, with the lower outer corner torn off, a single minute wormhole in the gutter margin through the first half of the book, otherwise in very good condition. Binding rubbed and front hinge partly split, but otherwise good. An essential source for Europes earliest relations with the Middle East. Brunet V, col. 554; Dibdin II, p. 433; Graesse VII, p. 604.