Bonsoir! Here is the rest of Chapter Four, and it is quite long. What I have already transcribed undoubtedly contains the name of the source of Philostratus. The rest of this book seems to be devoted to other matters than to the publishing of books per se. See if you can find this book in France:

"Annales de I'Imprimerie des Alde" (3 vols.) by A. Renouard (Paris, 1825)

This evening I am going to do some Net searching at Google for some of these names.

Pages 141-142 -- We must now turn from form to matter, and enquire how Aldus' programme of publication was affected by the timely misfortunes of his competitors, and his own deployment of the most characteristically "humanist" range of types yet assembled by any printer. It is usual to say that after 1500 Aldus ventured beyond the devoted but slightly doctrinaire Hellenism of his earlier period and explored the whole ocean of humanist interest in the revived classical languages and the emerging Italian vernacular, expressing in his publications Pico's vision of the divine spark of Reason in Man as the instrument of universal enlightenment. An inspiring picture, certainly, and it derives some plausibility from the facts and figures.

The overall quantity of Greek material has, indeed, declined sharply: 4,212 leaves were printed up to 1500, only 2,235 between 1500 and 1503, and it is worth noticing that the proportion of Latin to Greek -- 3,839 leaves as compared to 2,235 -- almost exactly reverses that of the earlier period. But the range of Aldus' activity during the first years of the new century is astonishing. He was now printing in four languages. His experiments with Hebrew type stopped short with his own "Introductio perbrevis" and a few trial folios for his still-born polyglot Bible.

[COMMENT: If you recall from earlier, Lowry stated that Aldus wanted to publish some Bibles. Here again we see his attempt at publishing a Bible in four languages. That would have been a most fascinating Bible indeed! Nowadays, this would be no problem at all. Nevertheless, Aldus was a Christian. But he was also a "free-thinker" and "risk-taker" who published books that the Patriarchs did not approve of, but he published them anyway, including Philostatus (camouflaged with the addition of Eusebius). As far as I know, the only "unknown" or "missing" book that Aldus printed was that of Philostratus. All the others were available beforehand. And even if he waited till 1504 to "distribute" it, he did "print" it before he "printed" all the other more famous writings. One of his financial backers "pressured" him to do this. That is the mystery.]

But his Greek texts included five exceptionally important first editions of the fifth-century classical writers Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Sophocles and Euripides, most of whom had received only the most cursory editorial attention up to that time. We must also reckon with the influx of Latin classics -- Virgil, Horace, Martial, Cicero, Lucan, Statius, Ovid and Catullus -- who take the places of the rather dingy academic trivia which played so large a part in the earlier Latin programme. Most important of all is the introduction, with the italic script, of the octavo book-form, and its subsequent use for publications in Greek, Latin and Italina. A small volume, mass-produced in editions of up to three thousand copies, reasonably priced and easily carried, it seems a social extention of the humanists' conviction that literature could enlighten wherever it went, and the shameless haste with which the model was copied is the clearest proof of its success. ...

The notion that Aldus introduced both the octavo and the italic as a means of price-cutting is a modern inference only, and if the printer knew that he was widely heralded as the originator of some kind of "paper-back revolution", he would probably writhe in his unknown grave.

[COMMENT: AH! So the main "claim to fame" of Aldus is that he "invented" the inexpensive modern book. Before that, everything was written in more clumsy "codices" and manuscripts. Then there follows some discussion of the book market, prices of books, and so forth. To continue.]

Pages 146-156 -- What sort of market was he trying to reach? We do not have sufficient evidence about purchases to give any sound statistical base, but there are other possible guidelines: correspondence, the ownership of the few copies in each edition which were printed on vellum at special request, above all the men to whom some of the books were dedicated. It is these names which reveal the change in Aldus' circle of contacts, and hint at the tastes he was now trying to satisfy. The academic friends of the earlier period are still much in evidence. But Marin Sanudo, the diarist and statesman, who received no less than five dedications during 1501 and 1502, now bulks larger than anyone, and he is joined by an increasing number of similar men.

There are influential Venetian patricians like Antonio Morosini: powerful councillors from the Northern European kingdoms, such as Sigismund Thurz or John Lubranski; scholar-diplomats like Janus Lascaris, now in the service of the French crown. A few of the surviving vellum copies suggest that those who took the trouble to order them did not differ greatly in background or occupation. In London and Manchester there are traces of a superb set of the Latin poets, all illuminated in a style that resembles that of Benedetto Bordone, and all carrying the blazon of the Pisani family. A Petrarch now in London, illuminated in the same style, carries the mill-wheel of the da Molin, one of the most powerful families in Venice during the early decades of the sixteenth century. The library of the French administrator Jean Grolier, famous in its own time and today for the beaufiful design of its bindings, was particularly rich in Aldine octavos.

[COMMENT: YGGDRASILL ALERT! "The mill-wheel of the da Molin". The "mill-wheel" is another metaphorical reference to The Cosmic Tree. One of the books that discusses this "mill-wheel" in history is HAMLET'S MILL by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend, published in 1969. I have it. It is where I obtained my title "The Cosmic Tree". The front and back covers of this book can be seen at my website. http://www.apollonius.net/cosmictree.html Let me check HAMLET'S MILL for a reference to "da Molin" ... nothing. The index does not contain "da Molin" or "Molin" or "Aldus".]

The clue lies in the similar cultural and occupational backgrounds of all these men. All had been thoroughly exposed to Italian influences, generally at Padua: and all were busy men of affairs. They were the kind of men who would criss-cross Europe on the errands of princes and republics throughout the sixteenth century, waiting days for a fair wind or a clear road, pacing ante-rooms for hours in the hope of an audience which was never granted. These were the secular intellectuals of Renaissance Europe: the men who packed the expanding universities to win employment in the services of their governments, making what has been called an "educational revolution" in every country in Europe where their rise to prominence has been described.

It was for these men, rather than for any imagined or idealised "popular reader", that Aldus was working. He was not prescient: we have no reason to believe that he foresaw, or did anything to create, the "educational revolution". But he rode upon its tide, and he was clearly aware of the discomforts and difficulties that faced his contemporaries. He sent Ovid to Sanudo in the hope that he would find time to read it in intervals between his more serious work, and in his dedication to the Hungarian councillor Thurz declared that he would soon be turning out whole "portable libraries" in Latin and Greek. But Thurz needed no conversion. He had already written to Aldus expressing his delight in the neat editions of Horace and Virgil, and the ease with which he could now snatch a few minutes relaxation during a busy day at court. Lascaris was hardly less enthusiastic. If Aldus' octavos were not all that has been claimed, if they were an instrument designed to expand the pleasure of the relatively few and wealthy rather than the understanding of the masses, it remains true that they were a vital development in the emancipation of learning.

It is perfectly fair to insist on the idealist bias behind this stage of Aldus' career, so long as we remember that idealism constantly interacted with shrewd commercial calculation and a degree of divine disorder. This delicate balance of tensions achieves its fullest expression in the conception of the literary octavo: it shows in the careful weighting of safe Latin against speculative Greek titles; it even shows in the selection and dedication of the three Italian works. In printing the Trecento Florentine classics, Dante and Petrarch, Aldus may very well have been declaring his faith in the future of Italian as a literary language, and in Tuscan as the purest form of Italian. But he was also cultivating the tastes of certain courtly and academic circles whose rather ponderous efforts to handle the Petrarchan style survive in a number of manuscripts, and one of whose members, Carlo Bembo, supplied both the manuscripts and the costs of the editions. To realise their appeal, one has only to glance at the letters in which that compulsive patroness, Isabella d'Este, added a vellum copy of Petrach to her shopping-list. Even the short description of South Russian by the Genoese traveller Interiano -- a mere windfall which the recommendation of Daniele Clari brought to Aldus -- was turned to good use. Dedicated to the fashionable Neapolitan writer Sannazaro, it became a request for corrected copies of that author's own works.

[COMMENT: Carlo Bembo supplied some manuscripts. Five dedications went to Marin Sanudo. But Gabriel de Brasichella was first to apply for the copyright to Philostratus. Now we have reached the point where I quoted earlier.]

But meanwhile, this rush to publish with Aldus was becoming a force in itself: a positive force, perhaps, since it brought new material forward, but often an embarrassment to both commercial and academic planning, and a severe strain on the printer's nerve. We do not know the exact story behind the edition of Philostratus' "Life of Apollonius of Tyana": Aldus finished printing the text in March 1501 but did not publish it until May 1504, and sent it out with an introduction which attacked the work point by point and declared it the worst thing he had ever read.

[COMMENT: As I implied before, this is curious. Eusebius was published along with Philostratus and attacked Philostratus "point by point". So is this referring to Aldus or to Eusebius? There is a footnote cited for this information: G. Orlandi, "Aldo Manuzio, editore", 2 vols., Milan, 1976, XXVI. For comment see Christie, "Chronology ... ", p.213. We'll have to look this up.

[I am going to continue transcribing. We'll have to read between the lines here. If we cannot figure this out, then the next step would be to consult the three Latin/Italian translations that came out in Venice and Florence in 1549, inserted below. If these are direct translations of the Greek of Aldus, then perhaps some dedication or preface by Aldus is also included. None of these authors is listed in either the bibliography or index of Lowry's book. After reading all of this detailed material by Lowry, I can't imagine that Aldus would NOT reveal the source of any manuscript that he was printing. If not, then the dedication could conceivably be the name of the source. And we don't know if Aldus' Philostratus was one of the five books dedicated to Marin Sanudo.]

1549 Della Vita di Apollonio Tianeo by F. Baldelli, Florence

1549 La Vita del Gran Philosopho Apollonio Tianeo by L. Dolce, Venice

1549 Della Vita del Mirabile Apollonio Tyaneo by G. Gualandi, Venice

For his text of Valerius Maximus and for Bessarion's defence of Plato, Aldus received new material when his press-run was already almost complete, and had to print additional leaves. The large-scale edition of the Christian Latin Poets seems to have been turned into a publisher's nightmare by this kind of enthusiasm. The first volume and the first half of the second were in print by January 1501 [just before Philostratus], but the dedication of the second to Daniele Clari carries the date June 1502.

[COMMENT: This eliminates one of the books from dedication to Marin Sanudo.]

Undated works in Greek and Latin, with the quires differently marked, are added at the end of both volumes. The third volume was delayed until June 1504.

[COMMENT: So, another book was also "delayed" from 1501 to 1504, and there was nothing "controversial" about the Christian Poets. A "quire" is a set or packet of about 24 pieces of paper, like in a booklet. That is a new word for me. I have never seen it before and had to look it up in the dictionary.]

The most probable explanation is that Aldus had originally planned a fairly modest edition of the shorter works of Sedulius, Juvencus, Arator and Prudentius which would have been contained in a single volume and now stand in the earliest dated sections. Then word got round, scholarly enthusiasm took over, and new material started to flow in: first, a more complete manuscript of Prudentius from England, which upset the balance of the volume; then the Greek works of John of Damascus, Cosmas and Epiphanius which were in due course translated, edited, and compounded with the first volume. This of course meant rounding off the second volume, so Pierocandido Decembrio was deputed to edit and translate the "Homerocentra" and the two volumes were apparently published together some eighteen months late.

Meanwhile manuscripts of Gregory Nazanzenus had begun to appear and to be set in order for another volume: one arrived so late that Aldus simply added two and a half pages of corrections to the Greek text, besought his readers to set the Latin translation right for themselves, and tried to persuade himself with an Homeric tag that things were bound to get easier soon. Nonnus' paraphrase of St. John's Gospel, which was to have been published as a fourth volume and was in proof when the third was completed, seems never to have appeared officially.

It was appropriate that the second volume of this confused series was the first to carry Aldus' famous cipher of the dolphin and anchor, the symbol of the ancient proverb "Hasten slowly" which Aldus had declared his motto as early as 1499 and seems to have expounded regularly to his friends. In 1502 it was, in fact, a very neat appraisal of his position. He had achieved much. But his continued success would depend on preserving the balance of two forces which might not always be reconcilable: the enthusiasm of the academic friends who deluged him with manuscripts and requests for new editions, and the business-sense of his partners who wanted to sell more books.

The decline of Aldus' enterprise from the zenith which it had reached in 1502-3 is as obvious to us as it was obvious to contemporaries. Only two dozen editions were brought out between 1504 and the autumn of 1512 -- less than had appeared during the previous two years alone. There were more than four years of total inactivity, between December 1505 and December 1507, April 1509 and October 1512. But the process is gradual, wholly different from the sudden collapse of Callierges' organisation in 1500, and interrupted by exceptionally important bursts of editorial work: it is not surprising that critics have hesitated to speak of the company as being in decline, and have preferred to hint at commercial difficulties resulting from the perilous situation of Venice itself during these years.

The programme of Greek publications was maintained: the commentaries of Johannes Grammaticus continued the series of Aristotelian works which had started in 1495, and they were closely flanked by the Latin translations of Theodorus Gaza. Gregory Nazanzenus rounded off the Christian poets. The two volumes of Homer, though not a first edition, were rendered almost as important by their octavo form, and had been planned for nearly three years. So, apparently, had the text of Demosthenes' "Orations": this was a small press-run which encountered many difficulties, but Aldus considered the books finer than any he had so far produced. Together with the Greek Orators who followed in 1508-9, these volumes form a pair of extremely important first editions which assured the survival of Greek rhetoric as certainly as the earlier editions of Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Sophocles, and Euripides had assured that of history and drama. The "Moralia" of Plutarch, which finally appeared in 1509, were another educational favourite, and had been planned for at least ten years. Whatever his problems, it is clear that Aldus' faith in the educational value of Hellenism was still very much alive and capable of translating itself into action.

The Latin editions are more scanty, and contain a good deal of contemporary trivia. But the text of Pliny's letters gains importance from being based on a very early manuscript, and Erasmus' "Adagia" was one of the most successful books of the age.

Allowing for all this, there are still three factors to be explained satisfactorily. The first is the precipitous decline in the actual volume of material printed. The second is the long stoppage between 1506 and 1507, which cannot be blamed on a war that only began in 1509. The third is a feeling among contemporary intellectuals that Aldus was letting them down. "He has done nothing notable since he married," lamented John Cuno at the end of 1505. "I cannot imagine what is the cause of such a change in Aldus, unless it is Aristophanes' old problem of poverty."

One of the works that Aldus did produce during this period was Bembo's "Asolani". To us it is a work of great interest: a fascinating glimpse of high society, an important literary experiment, a popularisation of Ficino's theories of love, and an edition which commands attention because of the personalities concerned, and because of it connection with political developments in Rome and Ferrara. But to Cuno, the work was "a few odds and ends in the vernacular, about Love". The unthinkable had happened. Aldus was printing trash.

It is fairly clear that the academic friends for whom Aldus had worked so assiduously before 1500 were principally interested in the Greek editions for which he was now their only source, and that they were prepared to put considerable pressure on him to get what they wanted. As early as 1501 Lascaris sniffed at Aldus' "migration from Greece to Italy", and accused him of vulgar profiteering. Angelo Gabriel demanded the publication of Demosthenes with "almost daily reproaches". Writing from Rome in April 1505 Scipio Fortiguerra was anxious about rumours that Aldus had given up printing Greek texts entirely. As we have seen, he had not done so and never did. But Greek editions were expensive to produce and difficult to sell, especially compared to the neat octavos of the ever-popular Latin authors. In the catalogue of 1513, only the largest Latin texts printed before the turn of the century are still represented: the Greek editions right back to Lascaris' Grammar are still available, and offered at cut prices.

[COMMENT: Once again it is emphasized how expensive it was to produce the Greek texts, yet notwithstanding that expense, a Greek edition of Philostratus was "printed" in March 1501; and as we know, this is not a "short" book by any means. Certainly there was a "reason" for this, whatever it may turn out to be in the end.]

We cannot be too surprised at the increasing number of signs that Aldus' partners were beginning to intervene more directly in the running of the company, to warn him against speculative Greek editions, and to press for safer titles like the works of Virgil, which had been cleared between 1501 and 1505. The first hint of trouble came as early as 1503, when a series of translations from the sermons of Origen was published "at Andrea Torresani's expense, by the zeal and learning of Aldus Manutius". The formula, normally restricted to limited partnerships, is unique among Aldine publications and seems to suggest that additional funds had been needed to cover the cost of the edition. It was Torresani who informed Fortiguerra in 1505 that Greek was being abandoned: and at the end of the year John Cuno reported that the bookseller was threatening to accept no more Greek texts for sale unless costs could be met more satisfactorily.

[COMMENT: Here again the matter of expense is raised. Also, if his "partners" objected about the "speculative" nature of publishing these Greek texts, then in all probability, they were not the ones who were supplying Aldus with the original Greek manuscripts, particularly not Torresani, who by his emphasis on the sermons of Origen, was certainly a Christian like Aldus.]

Tensions such as these could now be embraced by some jargon-phrase like "board-room battle", and it would be a mistake to inflate them into full-scale crisis. We have only the humanists' account, and humanists did not love Torresani. The problems were almost certainly real, since the industry as a whole was in a profound recession and some of Aldus' most successful publications were being ruthlessly undercut by cheap counterfeits. It was a time to keep a close watch on cash-flow.

Aldus must also have been in a state of distressing personal uncertainty. For some years he had been negotiating for a place at the imperial court, and in 1505 his hopes seemed on the verge of fruition as his friends redoubled their efforts and Maximilian kept nodding affably. Large undertakings may have seemed to have little point. Whether Aldus, rather than his intellectual friends, had any serious clash with Torresani in the meantime seems extremely doubtful. It is unlikely in view of Andrea's overwhelming influence in the company, and still more unlikely in view of the fact that Aldus married his partner's daughter Maria in January 1505. Dynastic unions of this kind were a frequent expression of solidarity in the press-world: the syndicate of Jenson and John of Cologne had been riveted together by several of them, and Aldus' marriage may seem even more than usually calculated when we discover that, outdoing cliché or proverb, he was actually older than Maria's father. But the difference in age does not appear to have prevented the union from being both happy and fruitful.

As the winter of 1505 advanced, the hopes of imperial patronage diminished, and Aldus closed ranks with his partner and father-in-law. At some moment which cannot be precisely pinpointed but probably followed soon after his wedding, Aldus abandoned the house in Sant'Agostino and moved in with his wife's family who lived near San Paternian. On 27 March 1506 he drew up a will which named Torresani as principal executor and main beneficiary: next day the two partners signed a legal act which declared all their property and assets unified, allotting four-fifths of the total to Andrea and one-fifth to Aldus. Shortly afterwards Aldus left Venice on an extensive search for manuscripts throughout Lombardy, encountering the unlooked-for adventure described in the previous chapter but considerably extending his range of influential contacts. Naturally, all press-work was at an end. But the terms of the will and the aim of the journey make it certain that operations were to continue, the linking of hands with Torresani makes it seem unlikely that disagreement was more than superficial, and the 2,000 or so ducats dispersed in the will hardly suggest that economic difficulties had yet reached crisis point. The stoppage in 1506 was almost certainly a case of planned retrenchment. Exhausted by swimming with the dolphin for ten years, Aldus was clinging to the anchor for a breathing-space.

One of the factors which made this intermission necessary was almost certainly the threat of unfair or illegal competition, though the blurred and fragmentary quality of the evidence obscures the exact connections. We have already seen the press-pirate, who cut away the time and expense of editorship by securing advance copies from other workshops, haunting the imagination of the numerous publishers who applied to the Venetian senate for protection. Aldus exerted his great influence to the maximum to defend his position. At the very outset of his career he broke new ground by requesting privileges for his Greek cursive types, rather than his titles: he did the same for his italic types in March 1502, and confirmed both privileges with a comprehensive senatorial decree and a ducal letter, which were issued in the autumn of the same year. Besides these wider defences, he held the standard Venetian copyrights on several individual titles including St. Catherine of Siena, The Christian Poets, and Bembo's "Asolani". As though to give the final touch to his portfolio, Aldus had the protection of his types confirmed and extended by papal bull. Considering the reputation which these privileges have won for the Venetian government as an enlightened body, and the political leverage which Aldus could command, he would seem to have been one of the best protected publishers of his time.

In fact, his experience casts grave doubts on the efficacy of the entire system. The case of Gabriel of Brasichella, when conflicting privileges were issued in favour of Aldus' types and Gabriel's titles, hints clearly at the dangers which might lie in lack of technical knowledge, shortage of legal precedent, and in the sheer number of the copyrights requested. What was a "counterfeit copy"? Did it have to resemble an original -- whose priority would of course have to be proved -- in every detail, or could it be made respectable by a change in size, in type, or by the discreet introduction of new material? How "similar" did similar type-faces have to be? The situation must have been complicated as much by these technical uncertainties as by the lingering convictions of the manuscript-age, that copying another man's work was more of a favour than an injury. ...

In 1503 he changed tack and published an "Admonition against the Lyons typographers", which was in reality an attempt to cut his rivals out of the market by warning customers of the existence of these forged versions, and pointing to means of distinguishing them from the genuine articles. He noted the flaws in the presswork: he criticised the quality of the paper; he listed the errors which had been introduced. Duly admonished, the Lyons typographers remodelled their types, emended their texts, and issued new editions. Working on the widest possible definition of the term "counterfeit", Renouard listed sixty-four pirated editions of Aldine texts published in Lyons between 1501 and 1527, most by Barthélemy Troth and an Italian immigrant named Balthazar de Gabiano. The total may be subjective, but there is no denying the gravity of the threat, or the failure of Aldus' privileges to check it.

[COMMENT: It would be interesting to know if there was or still is a "pirated copy" of Philostratus published in Lyons. That is something for you to investigate. And, incidentally, Lowry uses the spelling of Lyon with the S added, Lyons. This brings me up to the top of page 156. As I noted before, pages 144-145 and 150-151 are covered with the tables that list the various books in chronological order. The rest of this chapter deals with the final period of Aldus' life, during the time of the French invasion of Venice and adjacent areas, his financial troubles, move to Ferrara and so forth. None of it is relevant to our particular search. However, on pages 162-163, there is another table, listing the Aldine publications between 1512 and 1515, as follows, and it contains 30 titles, for a grand total of 128 editions, which is very close to the total number of 130 titles published by Aldus, as was mentioned by Lowry earlier. This list includes three more volumes of Rhetores Graeci, and thankfully for posterity Aldus finally published "The Suda" of Suidas before he died.]

1512

Lascaris, Grammar, 274f 4° (G)
Chrysoloras, Grammar, 148f 8° (G)
Cicero, Ep. Fam., 267f 8° (L)
Caesar, Commentarii, 296f 8° (L)

1513

Rhetores Graeci: (G)
I, 99f fol.
II, 82f fol.
III, 134f fol.
Cicero, Ep. ad Atticum, 331f 8° (L)
Platonis Opera (G)
I, 251f fol.
II, 220f fol.
Alexandri Aphrodisiei Comm., 141f. fol. (G)
Perotti Cornucopia, 359f. fol. (L)
Pontani Urania, 255f 8° (L)
Catalogus tertius, 5f fol. (L)
Pindari Carmina, 187f 8° (G)
Strozzorum Poemata (L)
I, 100f 8°
II, 152f 8°

1514

Ad Herennium, 245f 4° (L)
Catonis de Re Rustica, 308f 4° (L)
Hesychii Dictionarium, 198f fol. (G)
Athenaei Dipnosophistae, 142f fol. (G)
Quintilian, 230f 4° (L)
Petrarch, Cose vulgari, 183f 8° (I)
Sannazaro Arcadia, 89f 8° (I)
Virgilii Opera, 220f 8° (L)
Valerius Maximus, 216f 8° (L)
Aldi Grammatica, 214f 4° (L)
Suda, 391f fol. (G)

1515

Lucretius, 125f 8° (L)

[COMMENT: That is it for today, M. Hestiaeus. Tomorrow I start with a new chapter at page 180. A Demain! R.]