How did a Venetian printer make books small enough to carry?

He made classics small, plain and portable. In Venice, where his Aldine Press was founded in 1494, Aldus Manutius introduced a small portable book format, the enchiridion, which revolutionized personal reading and is the predecessor of the modern paperback. In the 15th century books were often chained to a reading platform, so the reader had to stay put. Aldine books were published without commentary and in smaller sizes, usually octavos of five by eight or four by six inches, so they could go wherever the reader did.

They were not cheap, though. Manutius priced his Latin octavos at 30 soldi, a fourth of a ducat, and his Greek octavos at 60 soldi, while a master mason earned about 50 soldi a day.

Manutius also wanted readers to meet the Greeks in Greek. He believed Aristotle or Aristophanes in the original were pure and unadulterated by translation. Before him there were fewer than ten Greek titles in print, and one Venetian printer left the Greek letters blank for them to be filled in by hand. Venice held Greek manuscripts and many Greek scholars who had come from Crete, and under Manutius's supervision the Aldine Press published 75 texts by Classical Greek and Byzantine authors.

His 1501 Virgil introduced italic print, cut by the punchcutter Francesco Griffo of Bologna, and ran to 1,000 copies when the usual run was 200 to 500. Erasmus came to work at the press for ten months and expanded his collection of proverbs from 819 entries to 3,260. Manutius's emblem, a dolphin around an anchor, goes with the motto festina lente, make haste slowly.