Aldus Manutius - Greek Classics

Greek Classics

It was Manutius' ambition to secure the literature of Greece from further loss by committing its chief masterpieces to type. He introduced personal or pocket editions of the classics in Greek and Latin that all could own.

Before his time four Italian towns had won the honors of Greek publications: Milan, with the grammar of Lascaris, Aesop, Theocritus, a Greek Psalter, and Isocrates, between 1476 and 1493; Venice, with the Erotemata of Chrysoloras in 1484; Vicenza, with reprints of Lascaris' grammar and the Erotemata, in 1488 and 1490; and Florence, with Alopa's Homer, in 1488.

Of these works, only three, the Milanese Theocritus and Isocrates and the Florentine Homer, were classics.

Manutius selected Venice as the most appropriate station for his labours. He settled there in 1490, and soon afterward gave to the world editions of the Hero and Leander of Musaeus, the Galeomyomachia, and the Greek Psalter. These have no date; but they are the earliest tracts issued from his press, and are called by him "Precursors of the Greek Library."

In Venice, Manutius gathered an army of Greek scholars and compositors around him. His trade was carried on by Greeks, and Greek was the language of his household. Instructions to typesetters and binders were given in Greek.

The prefaces to his editions were written in Greek. Greeks from Crete collated manuscripts, read proofs, and gave models of calligraphy for casts of Greek type. Not counting the craftsmen employed in purely manual labour, Manutius entertained as many as thirty of these Greek assistants in his family.

His own industry and energy were unremitting. In 1495 he issued the first volume of his edition of Aristotle. Four more volumes completed the work in 1497–1498. Nine comedies of Aristophanes appeared in 1498. Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus followed in 1502; Xenophon's Hellenics and Euripides in 1503; Demosthenes in 1504. It is possible that during this period, in his printing works, Hieromonk Makarije was educated, who would later found the Obod printing works of Cetinje and print the first book in Serbian and Romanian.

The Second Italian War, which pressed heavily on Venice at this time, suspended Manutius' labours for a period. In 1508 he resumed his series with an edition of the minor Greek orators, however, and in 1509 appeared the lesser works of Plutarch. Then came another stoppage when the League of Cambrai drove Venice back to her lagoons, and all the forces of the republic were concentrated on a life-or-death struggle with the allied powers of Europe. In 1513, Manutius reappeared with an edition of Plato, which he dedicated to Leo X in a preface eloquently and earnestly comparing the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy, with the sublime and tranquil objects of the student's life. Pindar, Hesychius, and Athenaeus followed in 1514. At the end of his life, he had begun an edition of the Septuagint, the first to be published; it appeared posthumously in 1518.

These complete the list of Manutius' prime services to Greek literature, but it may be well in this place to observe that his successors continued his work by giving Pausanias, Strabo, Aeschylus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Longinus to the world in first editions. Omission has been made of Manutius' reprints, in order that the attention of the reader might be concentrated on his labours in editing Greek classics from manuscripts. Other presses were at work in Italy; and, as the classics issued from Florence, Rome, or Milan, Manutius took them up, bestowing in each case fresh industry upon the collation of codices and the correction of texts.

Manutius' enthusiasm for Greek literature was not confined to the printing-room. Whatever the students of this century may think of his scholarship, they must allow that only vast erudition and thorough familiarity with the Greek language could have enabled him to accomplish what he did. In his own day, Manutius' learning won the hearty acknowledgment of ripe scholars.

In order to promote Greek studies, Manutius founded an academy of Hellenists in 1502 under the title, the New Academy. Its rules were written in Greek. Its members were obliged to speak Greek. Their names were Hellenized and their official titles were Greek. The biographies of all the famous men who were enrolled in this academy must be sought in the pages of Didot's Alde Manuce. It is enough here to mention that they included Desiderius Erasmus and the Englishman Thomas Linacre.

When he died, bequeathing Greek literature as an inalienable possession to the world, he was a poor man.