Library Acquires First Edition of Plato’s Works

A rare first edition of the works of Plato printed in Greek has found a home at the University of Illinois.

While approximately 200 copies of the “editio princeps” were produced in 1513 by the well-known printer Aldus Manutius, just 40 are believed extant today.

“We are pretty lucky,” said Elias Petrou, head of the Classics Library Collection at Illinois.

The purchase was made possible last December by the combined efforts of Petrou’s unit (part of the Literature and Languages Library), the U of I Rare Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and donors George ’96 LAS and Jamie Reveliotis of Chicago. According to Petrou, not a week goes by that students have not asked permission to peruse the precious volume.

The book, whose more than 400 pages are in excellent condition, stands not only as a rare opportunity to view Plato’s work but as an igniter of the classical studies movement in the West. As the Ottoman Empire pushed westward, fleeing Greeks brought their knowledge and culture to Italy. Classical studies further flourished under the impetus of Pope Leo X, to whom the book was dedicated, with Rome becoming a center of Greek language and culture.

“Classical studies exist because of this book,” Petrou said.

Plato’s works previously existed in manuscript form, but Manutius, founder of the celebrated Aldine Press, tackled the gargantuan task of printing them in Greek. While Johannes Gutenberg may have prepared perhaps 65 typographical characters to print in English, Manutius would have created 1,300, Petrou said, as each Greek letter (with its various diacritical marks) has at least 35 versions. (Manutius, whose printer’s mark is among the 27 that grace the Main Library’s Reading Room, also developed other methods during his career to ease the way for readers, such as the use of commas, semi-colons, and italics, as well as the development of small, portable books.)

At Illinois, the study of classics has been a cornerstone, with such classes being taught since 1867, the year the campus was founded. What is now known as the Classics Library Collection has become a renowned center of classical studies, considered one of the largest and best such libraries in the world.

In addition to the library’s outstanding holdings, the U of I Department of Classics bears a long and storied history. Among its many significant academics was one of its earliest leaders, professor William Abbott Oldfather, known as the greatest American classical scholar of his era. He headed the department from 1926 to 1945 and spent summers excavating archaeological sites in Greece. During World War II, Oldfather helped save several European scholars threatened by Nazi Germany by extracting them and bringing them to the United States. Also, because Oldfather pushed the use of photostatic technology, copies of many ancient manuscripts destroyed by war are now available in the Main Stacks.

In addition to being welcomed on the Illinois campus the Plato acquisition traveled in February to an event at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago to celebrate International Greek Language Day. The occasion drew a crowd of 400, including the consul general of Greece.

The recently acquired Plato publication—and its enthusiastic reception by the university and a wider audience—refutes the concept that study of the classics is a dying tradition. Indeed, the university’s department grew by three professors just this year.

“You cannot move forward if you don’t know the past,” Petrou said when asked why such study is important. “You need the knowledge of the past in order to build something new.”

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The Classics Library Collection hopes to add the first English translation of Plato’s masterpiece to its collection here at Illinois. Just eight copies of this work exist in institutional libraries. Read more…