Noscere qui causas et certa uocabula rerum Et medicas artes per breue queris iter, Me lege: nec multo mercaberis: Angelus en me Sic et diuitibus pauperibusque parat. Cui tantum me nunc fas est debere, Salernum, Urbs debet quantum, patria terra, mihi. Here ends the book of the Pandects which Angelus Cato Supinas of Benevento, a philosopher and physician, has procured to be printed, with great diligence and correctly, in the most illustrious, most noble, most excellent, and most delightful city of Naples, mother of kings, dukes, and nobles, April 1, 1474. For which cause let us give thanks to God on high. Who’d quickly learn each ill to diagnose, The terms of art and all a doctor knows, Let him read me, nor will the cost be great, My Angel editor asks no monstrous rate. To whom, Salernum, I as great thanks owe As thou upon thy offspring canst bestow. No doubt in this instance the book was much obliged to its editor for his care in revising it, and the great medical school of Salerno might justly be expected to be grateful for the publication of an important medical work: the trouble of the situation was that there were so many of these not wholly disinterested benefactors in the field at the same time. Editions, it is true, were mostly small, owing to the slowness of the presswork; and, no doubt, each several printer reckoned that he had all literary Europe for his market. But when Rome was vying with Venice, and the rest of Italy with both, and almost every important press was turning out classical editions, the market quickly became overstocked, and great printers like Wendelin of Speier at Venice and Sweynheym and Pannartz at Rome found that they had burnt their fingers. Hence a commercial motive reinforced that natural self-esteem which still causes every editor to assume that his method of crossing a _t_ or dotting an _i_ gives his edition a manifest superiority over every other. In the next chapter we shall see how editors persistently depreciated their predecessors; but we may note here how, even when he had Chardella to help his finances, Ulrich Han could not help girding at rival firms. Thus in his edition of the Decretals of Gregory IX he bids his readers buy his own text with a light heart and reckon its rivals at a straw’s value. Finiunt decretales correctissime: impresse alma urbe Roma totius mundi regina per egregios uiros magistrum Udalricum Gallum Alamanum et Symonem Nicolai de Luca: cum glosis ordinariis Bernardi Parmensis et additionibus suis: que paucis in libris habentur: summa diligentia et impresse ac correcte. Quas, emptor, securo animo eme. Talia siquidem in hoc uolumine reperies ut merito alias impressiones faciliter floccipendes. Anno domini M.cccc.Lxxiiii. die xx mensis Septembris, Pontificatus uero Sixti diuina prouidentia Pape quarti anno quarto.