21. Aeschylus. Works (1518/19).

This edition of Aeschylus, the fifth century B.C. Greek tragedian, was printed a few years after the death of Aldus the Elder while the impetus of his program of publication of the Greek and Latin classics was still an important factor to the firm. In spite of an enthusiastic preface by Francesco Torresani boasting that few, if any, improvements could be made to the firm's productions, this first Greek edition of Aeschylus has been roundly condemned as one of the worst things ever to come off the Venetian press. One of its most famous gaffes is the editor's missing the fact that the manuscript lacked the pages containing the last part of Agamemnon and the first part of Choephori, printing them as though there were no break and suddenly throwing the reader into a completely different play with no warning. The book is displayed showing the page on which this lacuna occurs.