CENSORINUS GRAMMATICUS De die natali, per Eliam Vinetum Santonem emendatus.

Bibliotheca Aureliana (Poitiers), p. 49, no. 163; La Bouralière (Poitiers), p. 137; not cited by Brunet and Graesse; not in Adams.

Interesting edition of the author’s only surviving treatise. Bibliographers give the date as 1567: this is indeed a copy of the same edition, with a new title dated 1568.

The Latin grammarian Censorinus lived in the third century AD. De die natali, composed around 238, deals with the birth and life of man, temporal cycles (years, months, days, climatic years, etc.), religious rites, the zodiac, Pythagorean theories on music and the planets, the length of life, calendars, secular games, etc. It is a precious testimony to the history of the ancient world. It is a precious testimony to the customs, beliefs and rites of late antiquity. 

This edition was compiled and commented on by the scholar Élie Vinet (1509-1587), who was principal of the Collège de Guyenne and had Michel de Montaigne as a pupil, and whom Philippe Desan described as “the perfect embodiment of late Renaissance humanism”. Vinet, who had studied in Poitiers, published several works in that city, all from the presses of the de Marnef family. 

Some occasional foxing on the first few leaves and waterstain, tear repaired in the blank of the title.