Aldo Manuzio, Rules of the Modern Academy
In Greek
Paper
ca. 1500

Printers as well as scribes preserved the classics by combining scholarship and artistry. Aldus Manutius, an erudite scholar as well as an elegant printer who published many first editions of Greek texts, described on this unique printed sheet what was perhaps more a dream than a reality. He calls for those concerned with preparing and correcting editions of the Greek classics in his shop in Venice (many of whom were Greek emigres) to speak only classical Greek. Those who fail to do so must pay fines, and when these have sufficiently accumulated, they are to be used to pay for a “symposium”—a lavish common meal (the rule states that it must be better than the food given printers, which was legendarily meager). The Renaissance ideal of the publishing house as a center of learning emerges vividly.