Talk:Editio princeps

Comments moved from article
In the table, the editio princeps PUBLISHED of the Greek New Testament was compiled by Desiderius Erasmus in the year 1516 (NOT 1522 - that was the third edition). It was PRINTED by Froben in Basel.

OR the editio princeps PRINTED (but not distributed!!) of the Greek New Testament was the Complutensian Polyglot in the year 1514. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hbeef (talk • contribs)

Copyrighting ancient works
The Nebra sky disk, despite being thousands of years old, is currently copyrighted because of this concept because it was "first printed" recently. Are there many other cases like this? Esn (talk) 08:18, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Tables problematic
In many of these cases the translator/editor is listed as the publisher. Perhaps we need a translator/editor column, or to systematically move the translator/editors to the comment section.Gamonetus (talk) 00:45, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

A few points
1. John Carter says "There is an old and respectable precedent for its use [editio princeps] ...simply as a synonym for first edition; but this is apt to sound a trifle affected today". Indeed - ed. princ. of a Harry Potter? Seems to me best to reverse this trend. "Purists restrict the use of the term to the first printed edition of a work which was in circulation before printing was invented". Why destroy the very useful original meaning?

2. Emphasis on the term applying only to the first printing in the language the work was written in, is important. Many, perhaps most, Greek classics were printed in Latin translation long before the first editions.Often in the preceding century.The 1488 Homer being a notable exception.Few early printers had decent Greek fonts.

3. The date 1455 for the ed. princ. of the Vulgate is conjectural, and should be both bracketed (since it is undated) and prefixed by 'circa'. It is not of course a first edition of the Bible; there is none, and it could be said that the Bible has never been printed. If it were to be attempted, such a work would need to be in Hebrew for the OT, but with a few passages in Aramaic.And the NT in Greek. Either in two volumes, or dos-a-dos bound, since the Hebrew portion would run what we would call backwards from the other cover.
 * Fair enough. I added the "ca." Gamonetus (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

4. First editions are dependant on printing, not publishing, dates. So there is no justification for calling Erasmus's edition of the NT athe first, in spite of this error being perpetuated in many otherwise scholarly works. The Complutensian Polyglot of Cardinal Ximenes was printed in 6 volumes, 1-4 in 1517, and 5-6 in 1514. The New Testament was vol. 5, and so is unarguably the ed. princ.
 * This is a complicated story with no easy winner on which text was first "published" (in the printed and published sense). I have linked the Complutensian Polyglot Bible article, which lays out the story quite well. Gamonetus (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

5. This Wikipedia chart of ed. princ's is an admirable beginning. The subject is of huge interest to both scholars and collectors, and the data difficult to collect.With a bit of expansion and more research, this article could become a definitive source. It should at least include all well-known classics, such as the Aldine Strabo of 1516, and the 1598 Longus "Daphnis and Chloe". And thence work out to lesser known (and hence more useful, because hard to find) minor authors such as Theophylactus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.239.241.123 (talk) 22:39, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * We agree that this page has great potential. Please join in. best Gamonetus (talk) 01:27, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Literally, editio princeps does mean "first edition", but as noted, it's hardly ever been used except for works that were originally pubblished in manuscript form, and mostly for ancient works. Going on, I fully agree with many of the observations made here, and propose to put a cutoff date at about 800 for the works inserted in the list, to avoid generating a higly subjective list. Another point should be to limit the number of languages to Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Armenian and Coptic, as if we start putting first editions of Indian, Arabic, Chinese etc. works the table will get completely out of control (and, more importantly, the term is used very rarely for literatures of the extra mediterranean world). Thus, we should cut some names on the list. Opinions?Aldux (talk) 18:03, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably the way to go is to divide up the tables first, by languages. This gives the option of dividing up the page itself later, at some convenient point. It also would allow for greater clarity, for example in distinguishing editions of Latin works, of editions of Greek works in Latin translation, and so on. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems a reasonable approach to divide by languages. But I wonder about Latin translations of Greek works, if it's better to remove them from the article completely or create a specific table for them (keeping them with Latin works may be confusing, as not all of these works are very well known and could be mistaken by readers as originally Latin-written).Aldux (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * My attitude would be to lose the minimum information from the encyclopedia as a whole. List of Renaissance Latin translations of Greek works or such like would seem to be a perfectly viable page, and could be created from this page without undue strain. If creating that list made it easier to divide this page into "Latin", "Greek" and "other" tables, I don't see why not at this point. Charles Matthews (talk) 13:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you're right: after all, it's very common in scholarship to call the first printed edition of a Greek classic an editio princeps even when published in Latin. For now, instead of a new list, I'll just create a new section which I may call "Latin translations".Aldux (talk) 16:35, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
 * The ambiguity of the last point is why I preferred the list in its prior incarnation. I liked the strictly chronological approach and thought it was more useful for Renaissance scholars. The current approach is workable, but the tables have gotten a little messy in the transition.Gamonetus (talk) 02:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not a priori against restoring a purely chronological list, but I must admit it would be a bit of a pain to reorganize it like it was before (due to the refs and the new entries it can't be just done by reverting). Also, I would first like to hear Charles opinion, as he seems to tend in another direction. But could you detail beter what you mean when you say that it's "messy"?. Ciao, Aldux (talk) 12:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * A timeline is clearly best for some purposes; but what I was reading in the comments above suggested to me that this page had outgrown that approach. I don't know details, but I suspect that (for example) Cicero alone could add numerous entries to the Latin table, where just two are there at the moment; and Augustine is oddly absent.


 * I'd like to respond to the comments made in a flexible way, and to encourage further additions. I do think the chronological approach is valid; so if some discussion could clarify the sort of scope that would be helpful, we could actually think of forking the content. Charles Matthews (talk) 14:49, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, this list is seriously incomplete, I do hope through time to eventually solve some of the most problematic absences, like, as you noted, Augustine and Cicero (working a bit on this one now; and yes, once Cicero is completed in the list with all the editiones principes it'll be pretty scary). As for the "scope", what would you mean exactly? What authors to put in, what time span to cover, or something else (sorry if I seem a bit dumb ;-))?Aldux (talk) 15:49, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I just mean that a timeline would be fairly crowded if (for example) all the Greek Church Fathers and every Latin poet had to be mentioned. My guess is that the "humanist" impetus was mostly spent by about 1540, having got going by 1480. So illustrating what that was about is actually a smaller venture. Charles Matthews (talk) 19:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding at least the Greeks, many high ranking writers were often published even after that for the lack of greek press pieces; also, key discoveries were made quite late, like Procopius' Secret History and Menander's comedies, so I'm a bit reluctant to put a "end" date. Also, classics and church fathers for humanists were often part of the same culture, as was with Rober Estienne, for example.Aldux (talk) 20:08, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * It was messy qua table as it had lost some of its prior organizational consistency, for example having each year only listed once in the column and all the books published that year taking up multiple rows. You (Aldux) seem to have cleaned it over the last couple of days. There is perhaps a missing separating border or two here or there (and I will confess to not being an expert on making wikipedia tables), but what we have now is perhaps better and more consistent than it was a couple of months ago.


 * I am content with the new Latin editions, Latin translations, and Greek editions scheme. It does have utility.


 * A firm limiting strategy is what we need now. Major classical works and Patristic authors will perhaps suffice. Did Gilgamesh, Hammurabi, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle get tossed off the bus? I seem to have missed that move though I don't dissent from it. Gamonetus (talk) 03:30, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Well, despite it being quite a lot me me being around in wikipedia I'm not all that good at them myself, really. As for the issue of rows, the problem in my view stood especially because of the refs: if, say, 1472 stood in the Latin column only once it became difficult to ref the specific works, so I breaked up that except where the original edition included multiple authors (see for example Columella, Varro and Cato for 1472 Jenson edition), there putting the ref only once as one was the volume (for a similar case see in the the Greek list the 1544 volume by Robertus Stephanus of Eusebius' HE, Socrates, Thodoret, Sozomen etc). The notes I added in the comments section should hopefully avoid misunderstanding. That said, I'm still working on this and will be for quite a time.
 * Regarding Gilgamesh, Hammurabi, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle I must confess cutting them off as part of my reducing the scope. Ciao,Aldux (talk) 13:17, 22 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I am content with the exile of the Barbarian guests. The project is moving along nicely. I wonder if we need to footnote the publication dates. Since the dates and texts are linked clearly at this juncture in the table's formatting, perhaps one footnote attached to the name of the classical author or text will suffice. In many cases needed additional footnotes will follow in the comment section. However footnotes placed on the date, author, location that all reference the same source now seem redundant to me, given how the table has been reorganized. Thoughts? Gamonetus (talk) 12:05, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Regarding footnotes, the reason I feel a need to to source all that much is because often the sources I'm using clearly states which is the editio princeps but doesn't give the date (for example for Giovanni Andrea Bussi, alias Joannes Andreae, I've got a list of his editiones principes in collaboration with the famed Roman press, but without any dates given), other sometime forget to mention the editor (like is often, but not always, the case with Michael von Albrecht's History, a source I use quite a lot); other refs I need to integrate the comments, to clarify say Livy or Virgil or Apuleius. That's why I'm afraid there's no escape to sourcing all :-(Aldux (talk) 13:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The Donatus
It is somewhat revolutionary to posit a date for any of these these early Grammars earlier than [c.1453-4],as given by the ISTC bl. And perhaps more conventional instead to extend the 42-line Bible - usually termed 'the first real printed book' a few years earlier than 1455. Debatable, but needing an authoritative citation at least. This is a very useful page, involving obviously a good deal of effort, and worthy of a lot more to supply a really flawless result. A fine start.125.239.109.191 (talk) 05:19, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
 * The Donatus date is surely a mistake in the cited source. If not, I'd be interested to know what's Ciccolella's reasoning for such a date (she doesn't give any). Any alternative source?--WANAX (talk) 23:24, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

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Splitting the article / article size
Hi, I was considering to split the article into two: Latin and non-Latin, to reduce article size. Any objections? zsteve21 (talk) 19:36, 28 September 2021 (BST)


 * The list is very long, although if it were split, it would probably need to be split into four articles: 1) the main article, containing the text at the top, and perhaps a selection of important works from all three lists, with links to fuller lists; 2) a list of the editiones principes of Latin works; 3) those of Greek works; and 4) those of works in other languages. I can see no cogent reason for separating only Latin works, while combining Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, Hebrew, etc., seeing as the Greek list is long in itself, and the "other" category is long enough to support a stand-alone list.  Each article would still need to have a brief summary and a link back to the main article at the top.  P Aculeius (talk) 14:05, 30 September 2021 (UTC)


 * As the Latin and Greek sections are the largest sections, I don't feel like splitting the article into more than two or too many pieces. Hopefully, this doesn't suggest that I'm lazy. Also, as I found that the Greek sections is larger, I would probably combine other languages with Latin, so that the two article would be called: Editio princeps (Greek) and Editio princeps (Latin and other languages), because I like perfect splits. Your split suggestion would work, but the only problem is that the main article would be too small. zsteve21 (talk) 21:24, 30 September 2021 (BST)


 * The main article would still have some examples—just not ginormous tables of them. Perhaps pick twenty-five of the best-known works of literature from the existing tables and combine them, with an indication that there are many more.  But the article would seem absurd if its tabulated contents included works from every possible origin except Greek or Latin, since it's more often used of Greek and Latin works than of others.  Better to have a short article pointing at three long lists than one long list that simply excludes what you'd expect to find in the article.  P Aculeius (talk) 02:42, 1 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Ok then, while I start splitting the article in your style, I want you to confirm the consensus for the split. However, I don't really know the best-known works of literature and was hoping for someone else to do that task. Also, should I combine the main article and the other languages? zsteve21 (talk) 09:09, 1 October 2021 (BST)


 * No, that's what I've been saying: "other languages" also represents a large table and should probably be split into a separate list—otherwise the main article would have only "other" and not "Greek and Latin", even though those are the chief examples when this concept is discussed. That wouldn't make any sense.  I'll go through the existing lists right now and come up with ideas for an abbreviated list combining elements from the three existing ones, and post them here.  P Aculeius (talk) 11:06, 1 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Since these are essentially list articles with a short lede (in the case of the split-off list, very short lede), wouldn't it be better to rename them to "List of editio princeps (Latin)", etc.? (or technically "List of editiones principes(...)" I guess) -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:06, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
 * How about "List of Latin editiones principes", "List of Greek editiones principes" for those two lists? I'm not sure what to call the third one—"List of editiones principes other than Greek and Latin" seems a bit wordy.  P Aculeius (talk) 23:45, 2 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Here's a partial list of important Greek and Latin works excerpted from the existing tables, which probably should be edited down and placed in alphabetical order by author, rather than chronological order. I'll try to add examples from other languages later on today.  P Aculeius (talk) 12:53, 1 October 2021 (UTC)