[135] Aldus (who had trained for academic teaching) was publicly frank about the financial risks the book
trade involved. In the preface to his second venture into the printing of Greek, in 1495, he exhorted his student readers to buy
his edition of the Greek poet Musaeus’s erotic love poem ‘Hero and Leander’: if they did so, he promised to [136] reward them with
further treasure of Greek writing; ‘without a great deal of money, however, I cannot print’. In the same year, Aldus applied to the
Venetian State for a privilege which would prevent anyone else reprinting or importing into Venetian territories any of the books
(in Greek, or translations from Greek) which he was intending to publish. Aldus’ argument for such a privilege (to be held for a
period of twenty years) was the labour, expertise and cost of producing his new Greek typeface ‘of the utmost beauty’, which had
used up ‘a great part of his wealth’, so that he was obliged to recoup the costs over the a significant period of time.[…]
Isabella d’Este, Marchioness of Mantua, complained that the elegant little italic-font volumes Aldus Manutius was printing around
1500 were overpriced for their size, but she bought his printed books nonetheless. [137]Jardine, Lisa. Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance. NY: Norton, 1998. [originalmente 1996]
No se dice si Aldus se sali