[Footnote 360: Didot, pp. 147-151, 436-470, gives ample details concerning the foundation, constitution, and members of the Aldine Academy.]
[Footnote 361: We may compare the name of Melanchthon.]
[Footnote 362: A native of Rotino, in Crete (b. 1470, d. at Rome 1517). He acquired Latin so thoroughly that Erasmus wrote of him: 'Latinæ linguæ usque ad miraculum doctus, quod vix ulli Græco contigit præter Theodorum Gazam et Joannem Lascarem.' John Lascaris was his master.]
[Footnote 363: _Etymologicon Magnum_, 1499. Didot, pp. 544-578, may be consulted for information about this Greek press. Musurus boasts in his encomiastic verses that the work was accomplished entirely by Cretans. [Greek: analômasi Blastou ponô kai dexiotêti Kalliergou] in the colophon.]
During a severe illness in the year 1498 Aldo vowed to take holy orders if he should recover. From this obligation he subsequently obtained release by a brief of Alexander VI., and in the following year he married Maria, daughter of Andrea Torresano, of Asola. Andrea, some years earlier, had bought the press established by Nicholas Jenson in Venice, so that Aldo's marriage to his daughter combined the interests of two important firms. Henceforth the names of Aldus and of Asolanus were associated on the title-pages of the Aldine publications. When Aldo died in 1514 (1515 new style), he left three sons--Manutio, in orders at Asola; Antonio, a bookseller at Bologna;[364] and Paolo Manuzio. The last of these sons, born at Venice in 1512, was educated by his grandfather Andrea till the year of the old man's death (1529). He carried on the press at Venice and at Rome, separating in the year 1540 from his uncles the Asolani, and bequeathing his business to his son named Aldo. This grandson of Aldo Manuzio, called by Scaliger a 'wretched and slow wit, the mimic of his father,' began his career by printing, at the age of eleven, a treatise on the 'Eleganze della Lingua Toscana e Latina.' He married Francesca Lucrezia Giunta, of the famous house of printers, and died, without surviving issue, at Rome in 1597. Thus the industry of Aldo was continued through two generations till the close of the sixteenth century. The device of the dolphin and the anchor, intended to symbolise quickness of execution combined with firmness of deliberation, and the motto _Festina lente_, which Sir Thomas Browne has rendered by 'Celerity contempered with cunctation,' though changed to suit varieties of taste from time to time, were never altogether abandoned by the Aldines.[365] As years went on, however, their publications became of less importance, and the beauty of their books degenerated.