The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the tragedians had to be decided.

Greek type had to be struck.
Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses.
The Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben toiled by night and day, employing scores of scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty brain, whose work it was to ascertain the right reading of sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate, to commit to the press, and to place beyond the reach of monkish hatred or of envious time that everlasting solace of humanity which exists in the classics.

All subsequent achievements in the field of scholarship sink into insignificance beside the labors of these men, who needed genius, enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe for the accomplishment of their titanic task.

Virgil was printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, Aristotle in 1498, Plato in 1513.

They then became the inalienable heritage of mankind.