Aldus

I do hope that, if there should be people of such spirit that they are against the sharing of literature as a common good, they may either burst of envy, become worn out in wretchedness, or hang themselves.Aldus

Founder of the Aldine Press, Aldus Pius Manutius (1449 – 1515) was the first to print high quality, affordable authoritative editions of nearly every classical text in Greek, Latin and the vernacular.

He was born in Bassiano in Lazio and raised in a wealthy, scholarly Humanist environment; his closest friend was the great Florentine philosopher Pico della Mirandola. Aldus was devoted to ancient Greek, and around 1490 he moved to Venice, attracted by the numerous Greek scholars who had taken refuge there after the fall of Constantinople, and by the library left to the city by the Greek Cardinal Bessarion, an early promoter of the classics in Italy.