SOPHOCLE Lot n° 44

Sophoclis tragaediae septem cum commentariis. [Greek edition]. Venice, Aldus Manutius "in Aldi Romani Academia", August 1502. In-8 (85 x 153 mm), (196) ff. of which 3 are blank, the last bearing the typographical mark (Fletcher 2 and A1a). 30 lines. Greek types Gk4:80 and italics I1:80. (Small restored tear on folio v6.) Eighteenth-century red morocco, ornate ribbed spine, gilt roulette framing the boards and gilt diamond ornament in the center, roulette on the edges and counterpanes, double and triple vellum endpapers, gilt edges. (Small dark ring touching the spine at the foot and the lower left corner of the upper board, one corner dull.) First edition of Sophocles' theater. It contains the seven tragedies of Sophocles: Ajax, Electra, Oedipus King, Antigone, Oedipus at the Column, The Trachinians and Philoctetes. The scholies of Jean Lascaris announced in the title were printed in Rome only in 1518. This is the first mention, in the dedication to Lascaris and in the colophon, of the Academy set up by Aldus to revive Greek culture and language in a friendly and scholarly form. "It is known that Aldus and his publishers always used at least two manuscripts to produce their printed editions. In the case of Sophocles it is well established, since Beneševi ('Das Original der Ausgabe Sophoclis tragoediae...', 1926), that the two manuscripts must be identified with the Vindobonensis philos. philol. gr. 48 (Y) and the Graecus 731 from Leningrad (Lg): the latter manuscript contains only the triad (Ajax, Electra and Oedipus King), but bears the traces of calibration that allow it to be identified as the copy used for printing. Moreover, a Soviet philologist, B. Fonkich ('On the manuscript tradition of the Aldine edition...', 1964), [...] demonstrated that the editor was generally quite competent and followed the best manuscript, i.e. Y, the oldest. [...]. The text itself of the Aldine edition does not seem to have been analyzed. But Brunck was right when he described it as 'praestantissima omnium': few typos, no misunderstandings, no incomprehensible passages. [...] The humanists, with the Aldine edition, thus had in their possession a very acceptable text of Sophocles... Proof of this is the number of Greek editions which will refer to the Aldine. Thus the editions of Simon de Colines (Paris, 1528) and Joachim Camerarius (Hagneau, 1534) take up the Greek text of Aldus." (Élie Borza, "Venice, Rome and Florence: four examples of editions of Sophocles in Italy in the sixteenth century," L'information littéraire, vol. 54, no. 4, 2002, pp. 13-22.) A typographical feat. The princeps edition of Sophocles is the first Greek "libello portatile". It was printed with the fourth and last Greek typeface developed the same year by the typographer Francesco Griffo for Aldus. These stylized typefaces represent a considerable evolution in typography. Turning away from the manuscript-imitating typefaces used until then, Francesco's cursive typefaces offer a solution to the problems of printing texts in the Greek alphabet: "by any standards it is a masterpiece" (Nicholas Barker, Aldus Manutius, New York, 1992, p. 89). The small size of these miniaturized characters made the composition more complex, and the price of this volume was twice that of the Latin works. PROVENANCE Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne (stamped with a wheel, 18th century); Leo S. Olschki (bookplate). REFERENCES Adams S-1438; Renouard p. 34, no. 6.