Special Collections

The famous Venetian publisher and printer Aldus Manutius (1449 or 50-1515) focussed primarily on Greek texts, and did not bring out Cicero’s letters to Atticus until 1513. Aldus’s  son Paulus (1512-1574), who took the firm over in 1533, was by contrast chiefly interested in Latin classics and was a keen Ciceronian, at a time when Cicero’s letters were regarded as models for correct grammar and style. Like Aldus before him, Paulus brought out excellent texts edited by eminent scholars. This Italian translation is one of several editions and commentaries which he produced pertaining to Cicero.

The format of this volume follows the format which Paulus’s father Aldus pioneered successfully in 1501: a compact octavo volume in italic type (italic being more condense and narrow than Roman, and therefore taking up less space), This made Aldine classics both cheap and convenient to carry around, in contrast to the heavy folio editions of classics of the previous century.

The volume was catalogued in November 2009 as part of an ongoing drive to catalogue all the sixteenth-century continental European printed books in Senate House Library online.