Musaeus Grammaticus | The first Aldine with illustrations, and the second book printed by the press

Musaeus Grammaticus

Musaei Opusculum de Herone et Leandro, quod et in latinam linguam ad uerbum tralatum est. (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, [before November 1495 (Greek text); 1497–1498 (Latin text)])

Super-chancery 4to (183 x 129 mm). Greek and roman types, 20 lines plus headline. Collation: αb^10.12: 22 leaves (the Greek text of ca. 1495 interleaved with the Latin text of ca. 1497–1498), watermarks in the Greek text (bulls head with surmount of snake and cross; a balance with “teardrop” pans and six-pointed star) and a watermark in the Latin text (balance with “teardrop” pans and four-pointed star). Two woodcut illustrations on b6v-7r, and woodcut interlace headpiece and initials opening text on b2v and α2r; leaves α4-6 and b4-7 misbound, the title page soiled and lightly toned, reinforced along the gutter, its upper corner creased with a short tear, transparent ink stains on the verso of the title bleeding through the leaf and offsetting to the opposite page but not effacing text, occasional pale spotting or staining mostly in the margins, but affecting the two woodcut illustrations, the final leaf reinforced with along the gutter, the stub just touching the first letter of 6 lines of text, manuscript corrections, underlines, and annotations, some contemporary, others later. Nineteenth-century English dark blue morocco, gilt decorated spine with five raised bands and red leather label, the boards with a broad ornately gilt border, board edges and turn-ins gilt, all edges gilt; wear to extremities, mostly along the joints and at the corners, the joints starting at head.

The first Aldine imprint with illustrations and, in the instance of the Greek text, just the second book printed by Aldus Manutius, preceded only by Lascaris's Erotemata (and possibly by the Galeomyomachia of Prodromus).

The first edition of the Latin text, and the second edition of the Greek text (ISTC dates the only possible earlier edition, printed in Florence by Laurentius Francisci de Alopa, to “about 1494-96”).

“The Greek and Latin texts were printed on separate quires which were then folded so that the texts appear in parallel. The Greek portion is shown by Aldus' prefatory letter to have been printed before the first volume of Aristotle, dated 1 Nov. 1495. The Latin is printed in two post-1495 types, one of which has a paragraph mark not traced before 1497” (BMC, based on Proctor, Printing of Greek, pp. 95–96). The fact that there are several surviving copies containing the Greek text on its own indicates that it was available separately at an earlier date.

"As promised in the title, this short Greek poem on the star-crossed lovers Hero and Leander includes a word-for-word Latin translation by Aldus in order to foster the study of the Greek language through a more familiar tongue" (Grolier/Aldus). The translation was formerly attributed to Marcus Musurus, two of whose epigrams are printed in the text. However, the printer's copy of Aldus's autograph manuscript, collected first by Johannes Cuno (1463–1513) and then by Beatus Rhenanus (1485–1547), survives in the Bibliothèque Humaniste, Sélestat, and shows that the text is his own translation.

Renouard found that the order of the Latin leaves varies in different copies (cf. Renouard’s own copy, PML 264 in the Morgan Library and Museum, with the Latin quire misbound). The Askew-Woodhull-Butler copy, offered here, is also misbound, but not in the same way as the Morgan’s copy. Here, leaves are bound out of order in both the Greek and the Latin texts. The misbinding occurred when the book was rebound, as evidenced by the presence of early annotations in the gutter. The binder, not a proficient classicist, inverted the seven central leaves and bound them in the following order: α1-3, α5,4,6, α7-10; b1-3, b7,6,5,4, b8-12. The misplaced leaves have also been inverted, with their signatures on the left of, and adjacent to, the gutter.

The Askew-Woodhull-Butler copy is a later issue of the text, with all the called-for stop-press type corrections: the signature “c” corrected to “biii”; the correction on line 9 of b3r adding the word “ille”; b7r with “hanc” corrected to “haec”. This copy also retains various manuscript corrections to both the Greek and Latin texts: b2r (marked “b”) with “inuidiam” corrected to “inuriam,” omitted lines of text added on b3v, α3r, b6r, and α5v; without the correction called for by Bühler on α1, or the one on α3v (though these corrections may originally have been present—the text may have been carefully washed at some point, and while certain corrections and marginalia are clearly readable, others are quite faded). According to Beuhler, “manuscript corrections appear in enough copies to warrant the assumption that these improvements were made at the printing house, either by Aldus himself or (more probably) by one of his resident assistants.” For further information about the stop-press and manuscript corrections in various copies of the Musaeus, see Curt Bühler, "Aldus Manutius and His First Edition of the Greek Musaeus," in La Bibliofilía 52 (1950), pp. 123-127, or Geri Della Rocca de Candal, “Manus Manutii,” in Printing and Misprinting (Oxford, 2023) pp. 121-164, who examined 26 of the 53 recorded copies of the book, 11 more copies than Bühler.

The text is Musaeus Grammaticus’s poem telling the tragic love story of Hero and Leander. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a tower in Sestos on the European side of the Hellespont, now called the Dardanelles Strait. Leander resided on the opposite side of the strait in Abydos. After seeing Hero from afar, he fell in love with her and swam across the waterway to visit her. He secretly returned every night throughout the summer, summoned and guided by a torch in Hero’s tower window. When winter arrived, the sea grew rough. They agreed to wait until spring to continue their love affair. One winter night, Leander saw Hero’s lit torch and attempted to swim across the strait to her but, after the wind blew out the light, he lost his way and drowned in the turbulent waters. The two facing woodcut illustrations depict Leander swimming across the Hellespont, and the climactic moment in the story when Hero, seeing her lover has drowned, leaps from her tower to join him in death.

REFERENCES

Antoine-Augustin Renouard, Annales de l’Imprimerie des Alde… Troisième Edition, pp. 257-258; Goff M-880; Ahmanson-Murphy, The Aldine Press, Catalogue of… no. 2 (Greek only); Craig Kallendorf and Maria X. Wells, Aldine Press Books in at the Harry Ransom Center, no. 6, p. 56 (Greek only); Barker Aldus Manutius and the Development of Greek Script & Type in the 15th century, pp.52, 119; Curt Bühler, "Aldus Manutius and His First Edition of the Greek Musaeus," in La Bibliofilía 52 (1950), pp. 123-127; reprinted in Early Books and Manuscripts (New York 1973), pp. 162-169; BMC, based on Proctor, Printing of Greek, pp. 95–96; Needham, Paul. “Aldus Manutius's Paper Stocks: The Evidence of Two Uncut Books,” in The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Vol. 55, No. 2 (WINTER 1994), pp. 287-307

PROVENANCE

Anthony Askew (his sale, Baker & Leigh, Bibliotheca Askeviana; Sive, Catalogus librorum rarissimorum Antonii Askew, London, 1775, lot 2410, for £3/5; with manuscript annotations referencing the sale on front endpaper) — George Woodhull (his sale, Sotheby, Wilkinson & Hodge, Extensive & valuable library collected at the end of the last and beginning of the present century by Michael Wodhull, London, 1886, lot 1778, “with the omitted line on a ii and b iii supplied m MS. said to be in the autograph of Aldus, blue morocco, broad borders of gold, gilt edges”; manuscript annotation on front endpaper) — Charles Butler of Warren Wood, Hatfield (bookplate; his sale, Sotheby’s London, April 1911)