Abstract

The article describes the case of an edition of Plutarch’s Apophtegmata in Italian, published in 1565 in Venice by Gabriele Giolito, which circulated with two different versions of the first gathering containing the paratext. Matters are further complicated by the fact that, as was his common practice, Giolito altered the year on the titlepage while the book was going through the press, giving rise to the variant dates 1566 and 1567. Approximately 6% of the copies surviving today contain the cancellandum version of the first gathering; when the cancellans was done, the compositor worked with remarkable precision, so that the two different settings of the titlepage are almost indistinguishable. In both versions the paratext contains more or less the same dedication by the Florentine translator of Plutarch’s text, Giovanni Gualandi, based not on the Greek original but on Erasmus’ Latin translation, except that the cancellans is a page or so longer and it seems that the whole operation was dictated by the desire not to waste the blank leaf at the end of the gathering. The extended version adds fulsome praise for Giolito as a publisher, as well as making more explicit Gualandi’s pro-Tuscan sentiments, with interesting references to the city of Florence under the rule of Duke Cosimo I. The episode provides a fascinating instance of an author rewriting his text in the printing shop in order to respond to the needs and opportunities provided by the new medium and for this reason a transcription and a commentary on Gualandi’s preface are included at the end of the article.