Bibliotheca Graeca of Sakos Ikonomopoulos

The library is one of the most important of its kind on an international level, and the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation continues to enrich it. Its name is inspired by the eponymous work of Fabricius (Johann Albert Fabricius, 1668-1736), who used the term to describe the entirety of Greek literature. The collector and original owner, Sakos Ikonomopoulos, set the ambitious goal of gathering all editions of every work written in the Greek language up to 1453 and printed in Greek from the dawn of printing until the end of the 19th century. For this period, more than 6,500 editions of Greek literary works printed in the Greek language have been recorded. The collection, which has been assembled over the past 30 years, currently includes more than 4,000 titles, featuring multiple editions of all works of ancient Greek and Byzantine literature. It encompasses not only literature, philosophy, and history, but also sciences, mathematics, medicine, patristic and ecclesiastical texts, and more. The collection treasures a large number of first editions, incunabula, and rare editions from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Athanasios Ikonomopoulos (born 1953) is a mechanical-electrical engineer, computer scientist, entrepreneur, and the creator of the Bibliotheca Graeca collection and the website of the same name. He was born in Thessaloniki and studied at the School of Mechanical-Electrical Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens. He pursued postgraduate studies in the Department of Computer Science at the Pierre et Marie Curie University in France, where he also earned his Ph.D. in 1980. He served as a professor and IT consultant at various European universities and organizations. In 1987, he founded the robotics company “Zinon” in Greece, where he remained CEO until 2008. He has published more than 50 scientific papers and participated in over 50 scientific conferences. He has been a member of many scientific and cultural associations. Alongside his scientific and entrepreneurial activities, he assembled the Bibliotheca Graeca collection, one of the most significant of its kind worldwide, which treasures editions of ancient Greek and Byzantine texts. He has been involved in its documentation and cataloguing, efforts that resulted in two monographs and the Bibliotheca Graeca website.