The I<allierges Pindar
A Study in Renaissance Greek
Scholarship and Printing
by Staffan Fogelmark
Dinter
In 1515 the Roman printer Zacharias Kallierges
issued an edition of the odes of Pindar, the famous
ancient Greek poet, of such high quality that it
became the vulgate text for three centuries and
is still of great value today as it contains reading
variants that cannot be found in any of the more
than 200 Pindar manuscripts that are known up to
the present. Scholars and editors alike have been
debating and disagreeing about the manuscript
background of the editio Romana for two hundred
years.
What none of them has been aware of is that in
contrast to what they assumed, they have not
always been discussing the same book: in all these
years no one ha~ observed that as many as ten
sheets (8o pages) have been reset and come in two
variants. And it gets much worse: copies of the
book may not come in two variants only but in
any of more than 40 variants, because the printer
sandwiched the sheets more or less at random
when gathering them for copies of the book. The
author discusses these and a number of related
and highly interesting questions with far-reaching
consequences for the Pindar text. However, the
discussion is also widened to deal with the book as
a physical object, bringing up relevant questions
of early printing and analytical bibliography.
The study is based on a sample of 227 copies. For
nearly one hundred of them basic data are given,
such as watermarks, also including the twins
(more than 25,000 watermark data have been
recorded); also, the permutation of each one of the
227 copies is given. The Kallierges Pindar appears
to have been set in type by five compositors and to
have been printed on three presses: a full account
is given of the task and order of each press.
l'lNAAPOY,
O AYMPIA.
NEMEA.
I' Y0!A ;
1 ~0M !A.
M ui ~•y•~~~ -rrt~..>.wr.t.f o:dJJ'v .:fV-:
11-ou.~xol\lar O~;j ~.
([f,':'prcfii R omx per Zachariam Calcrgi CrctcnfCm, per
m tfh t S. D. N. Lcoms•X• Pont• Max• cacriamcondi
tionc>utncquis ~lit1s per quinque~ nium hos imprimcr~ ,
:ntt ucnundarc Ltbros po!lit:ut'j) gut fccus fcccrir, is ab uni
ucrl.1 d<t Ecclefia toro orbe tcrrarwn cxpc.'"S cxcomm unica
tu rql ccnfi:acur• ·
During his research into the rsrs Pindar and its
long-kept secrets, the author had the exceptional
fortune of uncovering the greatest secret of them
all, revealed here: a unique copy has a hitherto
unknown three -page-long dedication in stately Greek prose by Kallierges to an outstanding
Renaissance scholar and humanist, namely his
close friend and colleague at the Medicean Greek
College, Marcus Musurus.
This sensational document, until now utterly
unknown and of great interest to students of Renaissance Greek humanism and learning as well
as early Greek printing, is now published for the
first time after its initial appearance in rsrs and
translated and discussed at length. In the wake of
this extraordinary discovery, one of the most illustrious Greek scholars of the Italian Renaissance is
exposed as a plagiarist.
The Kallierges Pindar addresses a multiple readership: analytical bibliographers, classical scholars,
students of Renaissance culture and early printing, to mention just a few groups of readers who
will find a challenge in the many observations and
questions laid before them. (Knowledge of Greek
is not a prerequisite for profiting from reading the
book as virtually all the Greek that appears in the
main text is translated.)
Staffan Fogelmark
The Kallierges Pindar
A Study in Renaissance Greek Scholarship
and Printing
2 volumes. XVII, 787 pages including I6o plates
2I x 28 cm. Cloth in slipcase.
€
I80,- ISBN 978 3 924794 60 6
Published by
Verlag Jiirgen Dinter
email: [email protected]
www.dinter.de
Buchholzstr. 8, D-SI06I Koeln I Germany