Title: Naphsi Phileloai, Autoris Graeci, Παραγέλματα. A Iacobo Blanchono Latinè facta, & Commentarijs explicata
Description: <p class="marcline" style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;background:#FFFFFF;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">16mo.
pp. 62, [2]. Signatures: a-d<sup>8</sup>. Vellum, pastedowns from previous
manuscript(s). Label pasted on front cover. Manuscript “Ex libris Biblioth.
Bernardi Guillelmi…” Sig. “Vincem.” Manuscript notes on p. [3] of cover. Text
primarily Latin; Greek and Hebrew interspersed. <span class="marclinepart"><span style="color:#212529;">Woodcut printer's device on title page, woodcut initials,
head- and tailpieces.</span></span></span></p><p></p><p class="marcline" style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;background:#FFFFFF;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="marcline" style="margin:0in;margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;background:#FFFFFF;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">Only
edition of nine moral and educational precepts supposedly taken from a history
of the otherwise unknown Scythen, King of Thebes, by the equally unknown
Naphsus Phileloaus. Scythen had composed the work for the two sons he had with
a certain ‘Dericiassar.’ Apparently an invented text, in the manner of pseudo-Phocylides,
by the obscure jurist and classicist Jacques Blanchon of Uzès. Blanchon, whose
commentary provides Latin versions and parallels (in Hebrew) from the
Scriptures, presented the tiny volume to the senators of nearby Nîmes. The Languedocian
jurisconsult claimed to have taken his text from a Vatican manuscript brought
to Nîmes by a wandering scholar, a certain ‘Balphantius’, of whom nothing is
known–nor is there any other record of ‘Naphsus Phileloaus’ or of the Greek
texts. By 1675, a French translation by the lawyer and librarian Claude Joly
had cast doubt on their authenticity, on circumstantial as well as philological
grounds. No further investigation seems to have been made, however: the rarity
of the original –only two other surviving copies are known, at Harvard and the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France –may explain its neglect. The exposure by
Claude Joly (1675) is available <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?id=-_o9AAAAcAAJ&amp;hl=nl&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s" rel="nofollow">online</a>.
See also A. Freeman, “Hoax and Forgery, Whimsy and Fraud: Taxonomic Reflections
on the Bibliotheca Fictiva,” in W. Stephens &amp; E. Havens (eds.), <span class="marclinepart"><span style="color:#212529;">Literary
forgery in early modern Europe, 1450-1800, </span><span style="color:rgb(33,37,41);">Baltimore, </span><span style="color:#212529;">2018, 20-21.</span></span></span></p><p></p>

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<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_4102760" rel="nofollow"><span style="color:#4B64FF;background:#FFFFFF;">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins
University catalog record.</span></a></span></p><p></p>