ESTIENNE Charles Apologie pour Hérodote. Ou traité de la conformité des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes.

Cohen, I, 364; Renouard, Estienne, 126:7 (note); see Schreiber, Estienne, 161 (for the first edition 1566 : "Henri Estienne’s most popular book ").

Henri Estienne was the son of Robert Estienne (1503-1559), Francois I's printer. As a philologist, he wrote the famous Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, published in 1572, and numerous translations of ancient authors. But he was also an ardent defender of the French language against the predominance of Latin and the invasion of Italianisms, with his Traite de la conformité du langage francois avec le grec, published in 1569. In his Apologie pour Herodote, Estienne attempted to restore the seriousness and credibility of the historian of Halicarnassus. But, using the text by the author of L'Histoire as a pretext, he also worked as a satirist, mixing in a profusion of anecdotes, sometimes "cynical and bitter", about his century, and not hesitating, in particular, to make virulent attacks on Catholicism and the people of the Church, whose activities his family, supporters of the Reformation, had to endure. The author was reprimanded by the Council of Geneva for his text and forced to modify certain passages. Despite this, tradition has it that this book, which can be considered a masterpiece of sixteenth-century satirical literature, led to its author being burnt in effigy on the Place de Grève in Paris. It is one of the earliest criticisms of the works of Rabelais, and Montaigne borrows from it at length in Book I of his Essais. The three allegorical frontispieces, engraved but not signed, denounce the errors of the 16th century.

According to Renouard this is the only complete edition of Henri Estienne's most popular work.

"The Apologie pour Hérodote is one of the first books in which is found criticism of Rabelais' work" (Schreiber).

Fine copy, well preserved in it first binding.