Erotemata with Latin translation by Johannes Crastonus (d. ca 1498) 28 February 1494/95 and 8 March 1495

A grammarian and teacher at heart, Aldus provided his readers with appropriate language tools for the understanding of the original texts he planned to publish. His first edition was therefore Lascaris’s Erotemata with Crastonus’s Latin translation. The texts had been published before (Milan, 1480, and Vicenza, 1489), but Aldus’s edition included Lascaris’s corrections brought from Messina in 1494 by Angelo Gabriel and Pietro Bembo, the latter being the possible instigator of Aldus’s publication. Together with Theodorus Gaza’s grammar of December 1495, the two texts prepared the ground for the publication of Aldus’s editions of Greek authors. Aldus printed the Greek text on separate sheets from its Latin translation, so that they could be bound separately, or facing each other as in the copy here.

Both the Greek and Latin founts were designed and cut for Aldus by Francesco Griffo (d. 1518), a goldsmith and punch-cutter from Bologna, with the Greek types modelled on the hand of the Greek scribe Immanuel Rhusotas, a Greek scribe active in Venice from 1465 until about 1500. The woodcut decoration combines the tradition of illuminated Greek codices and Western humanistic manuscripts: headpieces in foliate design found in Byzantine manuscripts from the tenth century onwards were combined with faceted initials (also known as litterae mantinianae), set against grounds decorated in foliate design, or with military paraphernalia, that had become popular in humanistic manuscripts from the 1470s.

Inc.5.B.3.134[1800], a2 verso-a3 recto