Pindar and Theocritus in the 16th Century nicolas barker
Of the many Greeks who fled to Italy in the fifteenth century, we remember those whose teaching and writing did so much to preserve a culture in danger of loss. Two in particular left a lasting mark on both Greek literature and printing: Marcus Musurus and Zacharias Callierges, each the subject of recent substantial monographs. Both were born in Crete, Musurus probably and Callierges certainly, in Candia (Rethymno), about the mid-1470s. When they came to Italy is not certain, but Musurus had followed Janus Lascaris to Florence in 1486, drawn by Lorenzo de’ Medici’s plan, aborted by his death in 1492, for a Greek academy there. Callierges probably went first to Venice, where he earned a living as a copyist of Greek texts, and was then drawn into the new profession of printing. An able scribe, he learned the harder art of engraving letters on steel punches, to be struck into copper matrices in which printing types were cast. Cursive Greek script was a greater challenge, since it must imitate the lines that joined letters together. The experiments that gradually solved this problem took place in Milan (the steel-working cen- tre) and Florence, under the eyes of Demetrius Chalcondyles and Demetrius Damilas. Among the latter were the Greek Anthology, editions of Euripides and Lucian, and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, printed 1494–6, the texts in capitals and scholia in lower- case, texts and types alike inspired by Janus Lascaris, whose stated aim was to restore Greek letters to their primary form. Here we may see the hand of Callierges at work for the first time. By July 1499 the Etymologicum Magnum , the first and greatest work that bears Callierges’ name, was printed in partnership with another Cretan, Nicolaus Vlastos, with a famous commendatory poem by Musurus, hailing it as a Cretan triumph. He was careful to avoid technical plagiarism of the types of Aldus, patented by the latter in 1495. Musurus already knew him, having written two sets of verses for
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