13
●
ARISTOTLE.
[
Organon.]
Greek text. Woodcut strapwork divisional headpieces
and initials throughout; woodcut diagram on I1r. [234] leaves. Folio, 306x205 mm, 17th-
century English panelled calf, expertly rebacked, endpapers renewed; contents
unobtrusively washed with faint residual soiling on title and last page, title reinforced in
gutter, few cropped early marginalia in Greek. Faded stamp of Queen’s College, Oxford, on
verso of second leaf and recto of last leaf.
(
Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1 November 1495)
[15,000/25,000]
FIRST EDITION IN THE ORIGINAL GREEK
of Aristotle’s Organon, comprising his writings on
logic (Categories, On Interpretation, Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics, and On Sophistical
Refutations), together with Porphyry’s commentary on the Categories. “The central achieve-
ment of the Italian Renaissance was the reintroduction of the literary and learned works of
classical antiquity, particularly Greek, in their original languages. Aldus’s edition of Aristotle—
the first major Greek prose to have been printed in its original language—was the greatest
symbol of this achievement. Aldus issued his Aristotle in the one-volume Organon, comprising
the six treatises on logic, in late 1495, and then in four additional volumes, comprising the rest
of the Aristotelian corpus, in 1497-98. This earliest, and in many ways most important, of the
Aldine Greek folios heralded the achievement of the Aldine Press over many decades”—
Fletcher, In Praise of Aldus Manutius, pages 41-42. Renouard, page 7(5); New UCLA 4;
Hoffmann I, 271, and III, 285; Printing and the Mind of Man 38; GW 2334; BMC V,
553;
Goff A959; ISTC ia00959000.
