1 November 1495

Aldus was the first publisher to produce a printed edition of Aristotle’s collected works, excluding only the Poetica and Rhetorica. This book, entitled Organon, is the first volume of the series and includes Aristotle’s works on logic and dialectic. Printed in November 1495 and edited by Aldus himself with the help of the humanists and physicians Niccolò Leoniceno (1428–1524), Alessandro Bondino (active 1495–1505) and Thomas Linacre (1460?–1524), it was the third book ever produced by Aldus and the first to contain the Greek text only, having been preceded by Lascaris’s Grammar and the edition of Musaeus Grammaticus’s poem on the myth of Hero and Leander, both of which included Latin translations.

The edition is dedicated to his former pupil Alberto Pio, Prince of Carpi. In his dedicatory letter Aldus praises the prince’s scholarship and addresses him as a “new Mecenas”. Indeed, Alberto Pio gave moral and almost certainly also financial support to Aldus’s printing venture from the very beginning, in particular in the preparation of the first five volumes of Aristotle’s Opera (1495–98). At the end of the letter, Aldus provides a list of forthcoming editions of Greek works, stressing the fact that they will all be edited with the help of eminent scholars.

The Greek fount is once again the type designed and cut by Francesco Griffo of Bologna, modelled on the hand of the Greek scribe Immanuel Rhusotas. The interlaced vine-stem decoration of the woodcut headpieces and initials shows a combination of Greek Byzantine and Western humanistic influences.

Inc.3.B.3.134[1803], fols Delta 6 verso–Delta 7 recto