Gaza, Theodorus. 1398-1476.

Introductiuae gra[m]matices libri quatuor.

Venice, Aldus Manutius 25 December 1495.

Folio (310 x 209 mm.). [ii], [173], [35], [179], [4]p. (partial early manuscript pagination). Aldus’ first Greek type (roman for the title, preface, signatures and colophon), elegant woodcut foliate and knotwork initials and headpieces.

18th-century English sprinkled calf (neatly rebacked), gilt double-rule outer and inner frames with a narrow geometric roll, vases at the outer corners, red edges.

            First Edition. ALDUS CORRECTED THIS COPY IN MANUSCRIPT. In the preface, he supplied an intentionally omitted Greek word and emended an errant ligature in the epigraph on the same page. A few leaves later, he penned the correct form of one word in the margin, marking the error with his characteristic three dots.
            Gaza came to Italy from Constantinople in 1440 to teach and translate, and he composed this primer for his Italian students. “Gaza’s most striking innovation was to reduce the number of the verb conjugations from thirteen to just five…. The fourth book is the most extensive treatment of Greek syntax produced in the fifteenth century” (Botley). Famed Hellenists, including Chalcondyles and Poliziano, used the grammar to instruct their own students — such as the young Piero de’Medici. This edition also contains the first appearance of Gaza’s treatise on the Athenian calendar and editiones principes of Apollonius Dyscolos’ On Syntax and the pseudo-Herodian On Numbers.
            AN EARLY 16TH-CENTURY OWNER ADDED SOME THREE HUNDRED WORDS OF MARGINALIA, comprising twenty-two notes in the first twenty-one pages, keyed to red manuscript superscripts in the text. These glosses discuss Greek grammar, note variants from a “codex Balderianus” and correct accents, punctuation and subscripts. A reference to Erasmus’ translation of Gaza’s grammar, published in 1516, helps date the annotations.
            An elegant copy (two pages stained and soiled, first and last leaves dusty); from the Sunderland Library (Catalogue (1882) 5397) and that of T.K. Brooker.
¶Botley, Learning Greek in Renaissance Italy 17-25; Della Rocca de Candal, “Manus Manutii: A Preliminary Checklist of Typographical and Manuscript Interventions in Aldine Incunabula (1495-1500)” in Printing and Misprinting edd. Della Rocca de Candal et al. 151-2; Renouard, Annales de l’imprimerie des Alde 4,2; UCLA, The Aldine Press: Catalogue of the Ahmanson-Murphy Collection 5; Hoffmann, Bibliographisches Lexicon der gesammten Litteratur der Griechen I: 201 (Apollonius Dyscolos) & II: 220 (Herodian, incorrectly dated); ISTC ig00110000; Goff G-110.

Item #12165

Price: $52,000.00