Entretiens de Phocion sur le rapport de la morale avec la politique

New edition of Mably’s Entretiens de Phocion, printed by Didot le jeune in Year III [1795] on vellum paper in large quarto format. It is illustrated with two hors-texte plates after Jean-Michel Moreau le Jeune, etched by Giraud and finished respectively by Dambrun and Dupréel. The text is followed by Mably’s Remarques and accompanied by Plutarch’s Life of Phocion in Amyot’s translation.

Copy bearing the crowned monogram of Louis-Philippe. Later binding executed under the July Monarchy in full red straight-grain morocco, attributable to the Simier workshop. Smooth spine decorated with two large rocaille tools arranged vertically, black morocco lettering-piece. Boards stamped at the centre with the Gothic initials LP beneath a closed royal crown and surrounded by a laurel-and-oak wreath tied with a ribbon, within a large rocaille composition; corner tools and interlacing gilt rules. Gilt edges, richly gilt turn-ins, bluish moiré silk endleaves. Head and tailcaps partly rubbed, some general rubbing, one corner bumped, scattered foxing.

Published in Year III with two compositions by Moreau le Jeune, the edition took on an entirely different status a few decades later: the volume entered Louis-Philippe’s library and received a red morocco binding stamped with his crowned monogram.

The Entretiens de Phocion had first appeared in Amsterdam in 1763. Mably presents the work as the translation of a Greek text attributed to Nicocles, in which the ageing Athenian statesman Phocion converses with the young Aristias. Horace’s epigraph, “Quid leges sine moribus vanae proficiunt?”, sets the tone: without morals, laws are not enough. Through this antique setting, Mably argues for a politics founded on civic virtue, criticises luxury and inequality of wealth, and repeatedly sets the example of Sparta against the courtly societies of his own time.

In 1795, Didot gave Mably the luxury of vellum paper and Moreau le Jeune’s illustrations. A few decades later, the same volume was entirely transformed: red morocco, Louis-Philippe’s crowned monogram, gilt decoration and moiré silk.

Bound for Louis-Philippe, this treatise on civic virtue acquires an unexpected resonance: the text in which Mably set morals against laws and virtue against luxury ultimately found its way into a king’s library.