Aldus Manutius

Talk of nothing but business, and dispatch that business quickly.

Aldus Pius Manutius (Italian: Aldo Pio Manuzio; c. 1449/1452 – 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press.

Quotes

• Quisquis es, rogat te Aldus etiam atque etiam: ut si quid est quod a se velis, perpaucis agas, deinde actutum abeas: nisi tanquam Hercules defesso Atlante, veneris suppositurus humeros. Semper enim erit, quod et tu agas, et quotquot huc attulerint pedes.
  • To whom it may concern: Aldus asks you again and again that if you want anything from him you make it brief and then leave directly, unless you have come, like Hercules, to hold up the arms of an exhausted Atlas. There will always be work for you to do here, and for as many others who walk in, too.
  • On a placard placed by Aldus on the door of his printing office (tr. P. J. Angerhofer et al., 1995). Reported by Aldus in his preface to Cicero's rhetorical works (1514).
    • Partial translations:
    • Whoever you are, Aldus asks you again and again what it is you want from him. State your business briefly and then immediately go away. (Fletcher Clemons, Aldus Manutius: A Legacy More Lasting than Bronze (2015), p. 94)
    • Talk of nothing but business, and dispatch that business quickly. (Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 95)
  • See: T. F. Dibdin, Introduction to the Knowledge of Rare and Valuable Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics, vol. 1 (1827), p. 436; A. Firmin-Didot, Alde Manuce et l'Hellénisme a Venise (Paris, 1875), p. 153–154

Quotes about Aldus

• Ἄλδος μέν, ᾧ πολλὴν εἰδέναι χάριν ἅπαντες ὀφείλουσιν οἱ σπουδαῖοι, τὰ ναυάγια τῶν ἑλληνικῶν βιβλίων, κινδυνεύοντα πάντως ἀπολέσθαι καὶ καταποντισθῆναι, ἐκ τῶν ἐνόντων ἀνασώζει, πολλαπλασιάζων ἑκάστοτε καὶ ἀνθ᾿ ἑνὸς ἀντιγράφου, καὶ τούτου σπανίως εὑρισκομένου, χίλια τοῖς φιλολόγοις ἐπιδιδούς, συναιρομένου τοῦ γονιμωτάτου τῶν τύπων σοφίσματος, οὓς εἴπερ οἱ θεοὶ τοῖς παλαιοῖς ἐδωρήσαντο χρόνοις, οὐδενὸς ἄν, τό γε νῦν ἔχον, ἦμεν ἐστερημένοι τῶν πολλῶν ἐκείνων καὶ θαυμαστῶν βιβλίων.
  • Aldus, however, to whom all scholars owe much gratitude, salvages the wreckage of Greek books which were in danger of being entirely lost and sunk; and of those manuscripts remaining, he multiplies each many times over and instead therefore of one manuscript—and this one at that being very rare—he provides a thousand for the philologists, utilizing that very useful artifice of the press, which invention, had the Gods granted it in antiquity, would not have permitted us now to be deprived of any of those many admirable books.
  • Demetrius Ducas, Prefatory letter to Aldus' Rhetores Graeci (1508), I.85–86 Legrand (tr. D. J. Geanakoplos, 1962)

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Aldus Manutius on Wikipedia