Aristotle

Works (1495-8), vol.1: Organon



Aristotle, Works

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  The Venetian publisher and scholar Aldo Manuzio (c.1445-1515), better known by the Latin version of his name, Aldus Manutius, was responsible for producing the first printed editions of some 30 major Greek authors. Aside from being of supreme scholarly and historical importance, the early Aldine Greek texts are among the most beautiful printed books of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The first Greek book to appear at the Aldine press was a short text, Musaeus' Hero and Leander (1494, 10f 4°), no doubt as an easy experiment before moving on to more ambitious texts. The following year saw the appearance of the first Aldine folio, Theocritus and Hesiod (1495, 140f fol.). This was also the year in which Aldus began work on the first great scholarly work of the early Aldine press: the editio princeps of Aristotle's complete works in the original Greek. The first volume, the Organon, or Aristotle's six treatises on logic, appeared in 1495, with four subsequent volumes containing the rest of Aristotle's works published by 1498.  
Text kindly provided, especially for this exhibition, by Peter Thonemann