CICERO, Marcus Tullius. De officiis cum commentariis Petri Marsi .... With numerous white on black woodcut initials often incorporating small heads. Text printed in the center, surrounded by the commentary in a smaller type. 157 ff. (lacking last blank). Small folio. Modern calf with old gilt-stamped spine label. (Venice, Bartholomeus de Zanis, 23 January 1498).

A re-issue of the Bonetus Locatellus Venice edition of 1494. Cicero‘s (106 B.C. - 43 B.C.) great credit is to have created a specific Latin philosophical terminology by making post-Aristotelic Greek values accessible to Romans. In his “De officiis“, written around 40 B.C. and addressed to his son Marcus, then a student in Athens, he states that true humanitas results from every human being‘s moral obligations. The work was part of the traditional medieval ethics canon and was repeatedly printed in the 15th century, from the Fust 1465 editio princeps onwards. The present edition contains the important commentary by the Italian philologist Pietro Marso (fl. third quarter of the 15th century), which first was published in a Venice 1481 edition printed by B. de Tortis. Pietro Marso give special emphasis to an economics interpretation on Cicero‘s passage (I: 22) in the light of some Aristotelian concepts about money and exchange. According to whether utilities or benefits are concerned, a double interpretation of exchange emerges, connected with the concept of distributive justice which applies both to beneficence/charity and to the allocation of privileges.- Two cancelled library stamps on title leaf. Minor foxing to first few leaves, otherwise a very clean (washed) copy .- GW 6968; Goff C-611; Polain 1085; IGI 2920; Pellechet 3761. Not in Dibdin, Walsh, BMC, or BSB-Ink.

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