Because of the Aldine Press's growing reputation for meticulous, accurate publications, Dutch philosopher Erasmus sought out Manutius to publish his translations of Iphigenia in Aulis.

According to John Addington Symonds, writing in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Manutius was granted citizenship of the town of Carpi on 8 March 1480 where he owned local property, and in 1482 he travelled to Mirandola for a time with his longtime friend and fellow student, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, where he stayed two years to study Greek literature.

[7] Giovanni Pico and Alberto Pio's families funded the starting costs of Manutius's printing press and gave him lands in Carpi.

[12] The Aldine Press produced nine comedies of Aristophanes in 1498, and Pietro Bembo edited Petrarch's poems that Manutius published in July 1501.

[12] In addition to editing Greek manuscripts, Manutius corrected and improved texts originally published in Florence, Rome, and Milan.

During that time, Desiderius Erasmus asked Manutius to publish his translations of Hecuba and Iphigenia in Aulis through the Aldine Press.

Erasmus's original letter to Manutius inquires about the printer's proposed plans: a Greek Plato and a polyglot bible.

[13] With the success and accuracy of their first collaboration, Manutius agreed to publish the expanded version of the Adagiorum collectanea Erasmus was working on.

Manutius reappeared in 1513 with an edition of Plato that he dedicated to Pope Leo X in a preface that compares the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy with the sublime and tranquil objects of the student's life.

This was carried out under continual difficulties, including problems arising from strikes among his workmen, unauthorized use of Manutius's materials by rivals, and frequent interruptions by war.

[23] Only four Italian towns were authorized to produce Greek publications: Milan, Venice, Vicenza, and Florence, and they only published works by Theocritus, Isocrates, and Homer.

[5] Manutius launched Pietro Bembo's career as a writer by publishing De Aetna in 1496,[29] which was the Aldine Press's first Latin publication by a contemporary author.

"[32] The press printed first editions of Poliziano's collected works, Pietro Bembo's Asolani, Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, and Dante's Divine Comedy.

[35] The dolphin-and-anchor symbol is associated with the phrase festina lente, meaning "make haste slowly," indicating quickness combined with firmness in the execution of a great scheme.

The international honour society for library and information science, Beta Phi Mu, uses the dolphin and anchor as its insignia.

[44] During the 15th century, books were often chained to a reading platform to protect valuable property, requiring the reader to stay stationary.

The Aldine Press removed these inconveniences; Manutius's books were "published without commentary and in smaller sizes, usually octavos of five by eight or four by six inches.

[47] Everyday handwriting in Venice was in cursive, but at the time, printed works imitated formal manuscript hands, either blackletter or the humanistic littera antica.

[48][49] In the New Aldine Studies, Harry George Fletcher III, Pierpont Morgan Library's curator for printed books and bindings, writes that Manutius intended "to make available in type a face comfortable for its readers" with the cursive typeface.

Manutius acquired privileges for his printing press from the Venetian Senate, specifically, for "his types, his pioneering octavo format, and even individual texts.

"[63] In the Bibliothèque du Roi on 16 March 1503, Manutius tried to warn off those who plagiarized his content, "it happens that in the city of Lyon our books appeared under my name, but full of errors ... and deceived unwary buyers due to the similarity of typography and format ...

"[64] The woodcut images "included aspects of both continuity and discontinuity that involved the activity of Manutius, who was called upon to wholly explicate the new potential of the printed book and deal with the crisis of the illumination.

Shrinking in popularity, in 1506 the Aldine Press was moved to a house now covered by a bank building in the Venice square, Campo Manin.

[72] Manutius wrote his will on 16 January 1515 instructing Giulio Campagnola to provide capital letters for the Aldine Press's italic type.

Paulus won a lawsuit against his Torresani relatives for sole ownership of Manutius's italic typeface and in 1539 led the press with the Sons of Aldus imprint alongside his brothers until his death in 1574.

[75] The publishing symbol and motto were never wholly abandoned by the Aldine Press until the expiration of their firm in its third generation of operation by Aldus Manutius the Younger.

[76] However, before his death Manutius had begun an edition of the Septuagint, also known as the Greek Old Testament translated from Hebrew, the first-ever to be published; it appeared posthumously in 1518.

On Manutius, Paul F. Grendler wrote, "Aldus ensured the survival of a large number of ancient texts and greatly facilitated the diffusion of the values, enthusiasms, and scholarship of Italian Renaissance Humanism to the rest of Europe".

The inscription is Manutius's own words: "for the abundance of good books which, we hope, will finally put to flight all ignorance.

In 1991, Martin Lowry found that an auction in New York took place where "initial prices of $6,000–$8,000 and $8,000–$12,000 were quotes on copies of Decor Puellarum and Aulus Gellius in Jenson's editions: Aldus' Hypnerotomachia Polifili started at $25,000–$30,000.