The collections
The Museum Plantin-Moretus conserves a multiple collections. Old printed books and manuscripts, printing presses and tools, paintings, prints and drawings, furniture and paintings and several archives.
Latin classics - Justus Lipsius
Plantin convinces top humanist Justus Lipsius to print his Latin classics like Tacitus and Seneca at his printing office.
©Museum Plantin-Moretus
'Moribus antiquis - according to the classics'
A Roman History
Justus Lipsius (1547-1606) is one of the most celebrated humanists of his time. He is a student at the University of Louvain where in due course he will become a professor. Lipsius also teaches in Lutheran Jena and in Calvinist Leiden. His favourite classical authors are Tacitus and Seneca, and he believes that the ancient texts tell us something about the present.
In the first century the Roman historian wrote Tacitus about the history of Rome. This edition is Lipsius' first and immediately becomes his most important work as a philologist.
