Of the first GREEK PRINTING. The first essays in Greek that can be discovered are a few sentences which occur in the edition of Tully's Offices, 1465, at Mentz; but these were miserably incorrect and barbarous, if we may judge from the specimens Mr. Maittaire has given us, of which the following is one:
ΟΥΤΑΝΑΚΤΡΟΥΣΑΝΑ ΧΑΙ ΤΥΤΑΝΑΚΤΡΑ.
In the same year, 1465, was published an edition of Lactantius's Institutes, printed in monasterio Sublacensis, in the kingdom of Naples, in which the quotations from the Greek authors are printed in a very neat Greek letter. They seem to have had but a very small quantity of Greek types in the monastery; for, in the first part of the work, whenever a long sentence occurred, a blank was left, that it might be writ-
ten in with a pen; after the middle of the work, however, all the Greek that occurs is printed. Printing.
The first printers who settled at Rome were Conrad Sweynheim and Arnold Pannartz, who introduced the present Roman type, in 1466, in Cicero's Epistola Familiaris: in 1469 they printed a beautiful edition of Aulus Gellius, with the Greek quotations in a fair character, without accents or spirits, and with very few abbreviations.
The first whole book that is yet known is the Greek Grammar of Constantine Lascaris, in quarto, revised by Demetrius Cretenfis, and printed by Dionysius Palavissinus, at Milan, 1476. In 1481, the Greek Psalter was printed here, with a Latin translation, in folio; as was Æsop's Fables in quarto.
Venice soon followed the example of Milan; and in 1486 were published in that city the Greek Psalter and the Batrachomyomachia, the former by Alexander, and latter by Laonicus, both natives of Crete. They were printed in a very uncommon character; the latter of them with accents and spirits, and also with scholia.
In 1488, however, all former publications in this language were eclipsed by a fine edition of Homer's Works at Florence, in folio, printed by Demetrius, a native of Crete. Thus Printing (says Mr. Maittaire, p. 185.) seems to have attained its sum of perfection, after having exhibited most beautiful specimens of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.
In 1493, a fine edition of Iphocretes was printed at Milan, in folio, by Henry German and Sebastian ex Pantremulo.
All the above works are prior in time to those of Aldus, who has been erroneously supposed to be the first Greek Printer: the beauty, however, correctness, and number of his editions, place him in a much higher rank than his predecessors; and his characters in general were more elegant than any before used. He was born in 1445, and died in 1515.
Though the noble Greek books of Aldus had raised an universal desire of reviving that tongue, the French were backward in introducing it. The only pieces printed by them were some quotations, so wretchedly performed, that they were rather to be guessed at than read; in a character very rude and uncouth, and without accents. But Francis Tiffard introduced the study of this language at Paris, by his Bibliotheca græcæ, in 1507; and that branch of printing was afterwards successfully practised by Henry, Robert, and Henry Stephens. See the article STEPHENS.
The earliest edition of the whole Bible was, strictly speaking, the Complutensian Polyglott of cardinal Ximenes; but as that edition, though finished in 1517, was not published till 1522, the Venetian Septuagint of 1518 may properly be called the first edition of the whole Greek Bible; Erasmus having published the New Testament only, at Basel, in 1516.