TOTTI, Pompilio

Lavishly illustrated first edition of this handsome, detailed, early guidebook on ‘the principal temples, theatres, amphitheatres, circuses, sea battles, triumphal arches, curie, basilicas, columns, order of triumphs, military and civil dignities, rites, ceremonies, medals and other remarkable things’ of ancient Rome. With it, its obscure author, the Umbrian Pompilio Totti (1590-c.1644), sought to create ‘a portrait of ancient Rome both figured and animated’, bringing to life the antiquarian narratives of the city’s past through fresh images of its ruins, buildings, inscriptions, princes and inhabitants. The first few chapters, prefaced by an engraved genealogy, are devoted to Romulus, his founding and planning of the city; thence the narrative proceeds to the seven kings of Rome and their successors, interspersed with antiquarian digressions on Roman customs including weddings and military triumphs. The fine engravings, here in fresh impression, were based on the accounts of ancient historians, on contemporary works like Marliani’s ‘Antiquae Romae topographia’ and on Totti’s personal knowledge: e.g., an illustrated tripod was now ‘in the house of Signor Cavaliero Gualdo, and looked just as when it was unearthed in the baths of Paolo Emilio’. Sacrificial rites are illustrated with plates portraying a ritual scene and the numerous instruments used. The ‘colonna miliaria’, which stood ‘at the centre of Rome, mistress of the world’, was the ‘terminus’ of all the roads coming from and heading towards all the provinces and countries and kingdoms of the Empire. In the engraving it is accompanied by the lists of distances separating individual cities like Antioch or Constantinople from Rome. In Totti’s work, the topography of the past and the present blend, with extant monuments sharing the stage with buildings of which only scant references existed, such as the villa of Scipio the African. An engaging guidebook and a beautifully produced example of Renaissance antiquarianism.