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Details
PLUTARCH (46?-120?). Moralia, in Greek. Edited by Demetrios Ducas, assisted by Erasmus and Girolamo Aleandro. Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andreas Torresanus, March 1509.
2 volumes, royal 4 (281 x 182mm). Aldine device f3 on title, Greek type 3bis:90, roman 11bis:91 (incidental). 46 lines and headline, paginated. (Spotting, mostly marginal.) 18th-century mottled vellum, red leather spine label, edges dyed blue. Provenance: stamp removed from title.
EDITIO PRINCEPS. Although numerous 15th-century editions of Plutarch's Lives were printed, this is the first edition of the Moralia in any language, perhaps owing to the difficulty in establishing a text; the editor of the Aldine edition, Demetrios Ducas, admits that in some passages the Greek text is corrupt to the point of being unintelligible, and that he decided to leaved them as they stand. Printer's copy of part of the text, a 13th-century codex now in the Ambrosiana, survives and shows that at least two manuscripts were collated and that editorial work was carried out simultaneously with the printing: 'the process of criticism and emendation did not precede that of printing but advanced jerkily alongside it, step by alternating step... Printing classical texts was first and last an exercise in improvisation' (Lowry p. 240). Adams P-1634; Hoffmann III, 182; Ahmanson-Murphy 84; Renouard Alde 55:1. (2)
2 volumes, royal 4 (281 x 182mm). Aldine device f3 on title, Greek type 3bis:90, roman 11bis:91 (incidental). 46 lines and headline, paginated. (Spotting, mostly marginal.) 18th-century mottled vellum, red leather spine label, edges dyed blue. Provenance: stamp removed from title.
EDITIO PRINCEPS. Although numerous 15th-century editions of Plutarch's Lives were printed, this is the first edition of the Moralia in any language, perhaps owing to the difficulty in establishing a text; the editor of the Aldine edition, Demetrios Ducas, admits that in some passages the Greek text is corrupt to the point of being unintelligible, and that he decided to leaved them as they stand. Printer's copy of part of the text, a 13th-century codex now in the Ambrosiana, survives and shows that at least two manuscripts were collated and that editorial work was carried out simultaneously with the printing: 'the process of criticism and emendation did not precede that of printing but advanced jerkily alongside it, step by alternating step... Printing classical texts was first and last an exercise in improvisation' (Lowry p. 240). Adams P-1634; Hoffmann III, 182; Ahmanson-Murphy 84; Renouard Alde 55:1. (2)