De Octo Partibus Orationis…de Constructione.

LASCARIS, CONSTANTINE.

Aldus Manutius the Elder

Venice

1512

Greek and Roman types, with the Greek and Latin sheets interleaved. Large, bold Hebrew alphabet letters toward end.

Adams L-228; Renouard (A) 58.1

The third and most complete edition of an influential Greek grammar. Issued along with Aldus’s short exposition on the Hebrew alphabet with Hebrew font likely cut by Francesco Griffo of the Soncino Press. See A. Marx, Hebrew Type in Non-Hebrew Books in: Studies in Jewish History and Booklore (1944) p. 311. This grammar by Constantine Lascaris of Constantinople (d.1501) was the first book printed entirely in Greek. Giovannu Crastone later prepared a Latin translation, and these texts subsequently circulated together. Lascaris’s methodology, based on progressive language learning, was considered so effective by Renaissance and post-Renaissance teachers that, over the course of time, his grammar supplanted Chrysolora's Erotemta as the favored text for learning Greek. In the later Aldine editions a progressively larger amount of material was added to the grammar. The present edition contains: Letters from Aldus the Elder, Grammatica Graeca I, Erotemata, de octo partibus orationis I, Grammatica Graeca II, de constructione, Grammatica Graeca III, de promine, de subscriptis vocalibus, de dialectis, Greek register, Latin register, Apostles Creed, John 1:1-14, two poems on Phocylides, the introduction perbrevis ad Hebraicam linguam, and more.