I. ALDUS MANUTIUS (1450-1515). Teobaldo Mannucci, bet ter known as Aldo Manuzio, the founder of the Aldine press, was born at Sermoneta in the Papal States. After studying at Rome and at Ferrara, in 1482 he went to reside at Mirandola with his old friend, the illustrious Giovanni Pico, whose nephew Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi, supplied him with funds for starting his printing press, and gave him lands at Carpi. Settling in Venice in 149o, he gathered Greek scholars and compositors around him, and Greek was the language of his household. He soon published undated editions of the Hero and Leander of Musaeus, the Galeomyomachia, and the Greek Psalter. During he is sued five volumes of Aristotle; in 1498 nine comedies of Aris tophanes; Thucydides, Sophocles and Herodotus followed in 1502; Xenophon's Hellenics and Euripides in 1503 ; Demosthenes in 1504 ; an edition of the minor Greek orators in 1508; and in 1509 the lesser works of Plutarch. During the struggle of Venice
with the allied powers of Europe, Aldo's labours were suspended until 1513 when he published his Plato. Pindar, Hesychius, and Athenaeus followed in 1514. Besides these Greek texts, Aldo published the Asolani of Bembo, the collected writings of Poli ziano, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, Dante's Divine Comedy, Petrarch's poems, a collection of early Latin poets of the Christian era, the letters of the younger Pliny, the poems of Pontanus, San nazzaro's Arcadia, Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, the Adagia of Erasmus and many reprints. To promote Greek studies, Aldo founded an academy of Hellenists in 15oo under the title of the New Academy. Its rules were written in Greek; its members were obliged to speak Greek, and their names were Hellenized. The biographies of those enrolled in this academy, including Erasmus and Linacre, are given in Didot's Alde Manuce.