The Ivanovo Museum of Local History named after Dmitry Burylin presents a bibliographic rarity — commentaries on the Sixth Book of Cicero’s Speeches, printed by the Aldus Manutius publishing house.

The Aldine House was the first publishing house in history to produce books in the octavo format (1/8 of an A2 paper sheet) — a pocket-size format that has become quite common nowadays. It was founded in 1494 in Venice by Aldus Manutius the Elder (original name Teobaldo Manucci, also known as Aldo Manuzio) and existed for 100 years. Aldus Manutius the Elder gathered a group of Greek language experts and began publishing editions of ancient Greek authors, and from 1501 he started printing collections of Roman classics. The printing house had its own fully equipped bindery. The printing inks were made locally, and the paper was delivered from Fabriano.

There were many counterfeit editions of the Aldine House books. To deal with the problem, Aldus Manutius came up with a trademark — a dolphin wrapped around an anchor. This printer’s mark, which has numerous variations, led to a new series of emblems, symbolizing a certain motto, aphorism or saying, borrowed from ancient history, literature, and folklore. Using the sign of the anchor and the dolphin and the motto “make haste slowly”, Aldus’ heirs successfully maintained his work, and in 1539 the company was renamed “Sons of Aldo”.

Paulus Manutius (Italian: Paolo Manuzio; 1512–1574) was the third son of Aldus Manutius. He took over his father’s business after completing his education in 1533. He was a passionate Ciceronian and perhaps his chief contributions to scholarship are the corrected editions of Cicero’s letters and orations, as well as his own epistles in a Ciceronian style. This particular series is represented by the edition on display. Paulus Manutius copied Aldine’s title pages, elegant in their simplicity, which feature only the title of the book and the author’s name. The printer’s mark on the front page, designed in a reserved classical style, is a wood engraving in the form of an allegorical composition: a dolphin wrapped around an anchor, with the name of Aldus Manutius — “AL | DVS”. All this makes the title page of this edition by Paulus indistinguishable from those by his father. The Aldine House collections are held in the world’s major libraries and bibliophile collections. There are five editions in the museum’s collection.