Scipione Forteguerri (il Carteromaco) as Reader of the Aldine Greek Epistolographers: the Epistles of Phalaris

Abstract

The Aldine edition of the Greek epistolographers has been thoroughly studied in the light of its sources and its genesis, whereas comparatively little is known about how it could be read and used by its contemporaries. An analysis of the marginal notes which Scipione Forteguerri wrote into a copy now in the Vatican Library (Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Inc. IV. 149) allows us first insights into these questions, on the basis of the example of his annotations to the highly esteemed Epistles of Phalaris: it soon emerges that Forteguerri, by correction ope codicum and addition of reading aids as folio numbering and running titles, tried to raise the text and the book as a whole to a higher editorial level. As a close collaborator of Aldus Manutius, he thus mirrored then-current ideas of book editing as well as contributing to them, and so proved himself surely to be an exceptional reader of the Aldine Greek epistolographers.