Apuleius, Opera. Rome,
Conradus Sweynheym and Arnoldus Pannartz, 1469

Two years before the Corpus Hermeticum was printed, the Asclepius, a work known mainly in the Latin translation icorrectly attributed to Apuleius, appeared as part of the collected works of Apuleius. The Opera were printed by the first two printers active in Italy. Apart from a few Greek and Coptic fragments, the Asclepius is only known to us in this Latin translation.

Copy from the superb library of the Duc de la Vallière (d. 1780), the largest private collection existing at the time (50,000 volumes), which copy was sold to the no less famous English library of George John Earl Spencer, whose entire library was later absorbed into the John Rylands library in Manchester (now part of the University Library of Manchester).