Humanism and the Latin Classics

by Aldus Manutius

Overview

Aldus Manutius (c. 1451–1515) was the most important and innovative scholarly publisher of the Renaissance. His Aldine Press was responsible for more first editions of classical literature, philosophy, and science than any other publisher before or since. A companion volume to I Tatti’s The Greek Classics (2016), Humanism and the Latin Classics presents all of Aldus’s prefaces to his editions of works by ancient Latin and modern humanist writers, translated for the first time into English, along with other illustrative writings by Aldus and his collaborators. They provide unique insight into the world of scholarly publishing in Renaissance Venice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674971639
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	02/20/2017
Series:	The I Tatti Renaissance Library , #78
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John N. Grant is Professor Emeritus of Classics, University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Prefaces

Editions of Ancient Latin Authors

I Julius Firmicus, Astronomical Manilius, Astronomica (October 17, 1499) 2

II Lucretius (December 1500) 6

III Prudentius, Prosper, John of Damascus, Christian Pods, Volume 1 (January 1501) 10

IV Vergil (April 1501) 16

V Horace (May 1501) 20

VI Juvenal, Persius (August 1501) 22

VII Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius (January 1502) 22

VIII Cicero, Letters to Friends (April 1502) 26

IX Lucan (April 1502) 28

X Sedulius, Iuvencus, Arator, Christian Poets, Volume 2 (June 1502) 30

XI Statius (August 1502) 34

XII Valerius Maximus (October 1502) 40

XIII Ovid, Metamorphoses (October 1502) 46

XIV Ovid, Heroides, Amores, Ars amandi, Remedia amoris, etc. (December 1502) 52

XV Ovid, Fasti, Tristia, Ex Ponto (February 1503) 58

XVI Origen, Homilies (after April 4, 1503) 62

XVII Vergil (December 1505) 68

XVIII Pliny the Younger, Letters (November 1508) 70

XIX Horace (after March 30, 1509) 84

XX Sallust (April 1509) 88

XXI Cicero, Letters to Atticus, Brutus and his brother Quintus (June 1513) 90

XXII Festus, On the Meaning of Archaic Words (November 1513) 100

XXIII Julius Caesar (December 1513) 102

XXIV Cicero, Rhetorical Works (March 1514) 112

XXV Cato, Varro, Columella, Palladius, On Agriculture (May 1514) 144

XXVI Quintilian (August 1514) 160

XXVII Vergil (October 1514) 162

XXVIII Lucretius (January 1515) 164

Editions of Humanistic Authors

I Aldus Manutius, Instructional Principles of Latin Grammar (March 5, 1493) 170

II Lorenzo Maioli, Gleanings in Dialectics (July 1497) 180

III Angelo Poliziano, Complete Works (July 1498) 182

IV Niccolò Perotti, Cornucopiae (July 1499) 188

V Aldus Manutius, Rudiments of Latin Grammar (February-June 1501) 194

VI Gianfrancesco Pico, On Imagination (April 1501) 200

VII Giorgio Interiano, The Land and Customs of the Zygians called Circassians (October 1502) 204

VIII Giovanni Pontano, Urania, Meteora, The Gardens of the Hesperides, etc, (May-August 1505) 206

IX Adriano Castellesi, On Hunting (September 1505) 212

X Erasmus of Rotterdam, Adages (September 1508) 214

XI Tito and Ercole Strozzi, Poems (January 1513) 216

XII Jacopo Sannazaro, Arcadia (September 1514) 226

Appendices

I Lorenzo Maioli, Letter to Aldus (Spring 1497) 230

II Girolamo Avanzi, Letter to Valeria Superchio (March 1, 1499) 234

III Sigismund Thurzó, Letter to Aldus Manutius (December 20, 1501) 242

IV Aldus Manutius, Warning To the Typographers of Lyons (March 16, 1503) 244

V Giovanni Giocondo, Letter to Giuliano de' Medici (April 1513) 252

VI Giovanni Giocondo, Letter to Pope Leo X (May 15, 1514) 262

VII Giambattista Egnazio, Eulogy of Aldus Manutius (April 1515) 264

VIII Raffaele Regio, The Authorship of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (September 19, 1491) 272

IX Niccolò Angeli of Bucine, The Authorship of the Rhetorica ad Herennium (1515/16) 284

X Aldus on How to Assemble Your Own Bilingual Text Randall McLeod 305

Note on the Text and Notes 313

Notes to the Text 315

Notes to the Translation 319

Concordance 389

Bibliography 391

Index 393

Editorial Reviews

This priceless I Tatti volume collects and translates into English, many for the first time (although with the I Tatti Library, that almost goes without saying), the prefaces Manutius wrote for the volumes that came off his presses, the allurements intended for potential customers, the introductions to often complex subject matters, and, delightfully, some of that extensive correspondence, which lays bare both the artful flattery that comes with the territory when doing business in Venice and the knowingly public confidentiality in which every arriviste revels when they find themselves hob-nobbing with household names…Humanism and the Latin Classics makes the perfect bookend with the earlier Aldus Manutius volume The Greek Classics, and taken together or separately, they bring to the reader the whirring and clacking of the printer’s shop, the wheeling and wheedling of the time’s book industry, and most of all the burbling and rumorous and striving intellectual atmosphere of the Renaissance in its full flower, when books and learning and reading and writing seemed to awake from centuries of slumber and begin ferociously multiplying again in every town and city and seat of learning from London to Baghdad. Aldine books were everywhere during that explosion, carried in pockets, bought and traded, discussed by all, and these I Tatti volumes take readers inside the tornado and introduce them to the man in the eye of it all.

Open Letters Monthly - Steve Donoghue