Lascaris, Continentur, Venice, Aldo, 1495, eighteenth-century vellum, fourth edition, initials and decoration possibly by Benedetto Bordone

Lascaris, Constantinus. Erotemata cum interpretatione latina. De litteris graecis ac diphthongis et quemadmodum ad nos ueniant. Abbreuationes quibus frequentissime graeci utuntur. Oratio Dominica & duplex Beatae Virginis. Symbolum Apostolorum. Euangelium Diui Ioannis Euangelistae. Carmina aurea Pythagorae. Phocilidis uiri sapientissimi moralia … [Greek and Latin]. Venice: Aldo Manuzio, 28 February 1494/1495; 8 March 1495

The first dated book printed by Aldo, and the first book printed in Francesco Griffo’s Greek types. This fourth edition of Lascaris’s grammar was printed from a manuscript corrected by Lascaris himself, and procured for Aldo by Pietro Bembo. Aldo added his own Latin translation, as well as the editiones principes of the Pythagorean Golden Verses and Phocylides’s Moralia. The book consists of a brief grammar followed by familiar passages of text (for example, the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria) interleaved in Greek and Latin, so that students familiar with the Latin language could learn Greek through parallel reading.

4to (200 x 145 mm). Roman and Greek type, 24 lines. collation: a-r⁸ f⁴ A-C⁸ [D]²: 166 unnumbered leaves. Woodcut head- pieces and initials, faint early marginalia. (Washed, scattered staining, small worm holes and repairs to first quire, affecting several words and head-pieces, lower blank corner of A6 torn, blank corners of B7 renewed.)

binding: Eighteenth-century vellum over pasteboards (206 x 151 mm), edges stained red. (Loss to vellum at corner of lower cover.)

provenance: Georgios J. Arvanitidis (1876?-1953?), booklabel — Sotheby's London, 19-21 December 1960, lot 2 — Sir Peter Henry Berry Otway Smithers (1913-2006); Sotheby's London, 5-6 February 1973, lot 117 (realized £480). acquisition: Purchased at Sotheby's via Quaritch. references: UCLA 1; Aldo Manuzio tipografo 1; Grolier/Aldus 2 (this copy); BMC V 552 (IA 24383); Goff L68; GW M17107; ISTC il00068000; Renouard 1/1