EDITIO PRINCEPS
ARCHIMEDES.
Τα μεχρι νυν σωζομενα, απαντα … Opera, quae quidem extant, omnia, multis iam seculis desiderata atque a quam paucissimis hactenus visa, nuncque primum & Graece & Latine in lucem edita … Adiecta quoque sunt Eutocii Ascalonitae in eodem Archimedis libros commentaria, item Graece & Latine, nunquam antea excusa.
Basel, Johannes Herwagen, [(colophon): March] 1544.
Four parts bound in two vols, folio, I: pp. [8], 139, [5], 65, [1]; II: pp. [8], 163, [1], 68, [4]; the Greek text all in vol. I and the Latin in vol. II, with Eutocius’s commentary bound at the end of each relevant volume, with part titles to ††1 and A1, without blank I4, woodcut initials and diagrams, woodcut printer’s device to final verso; small marginal stain to α1r, marginal dampstain to lower outer corner of quire ††, a few quires slightly foxed, mostly in vol. II, small stain at foot of q2–r1; vol. II recased in eighteenth-century Italian vellum, vol. I very skilfully bound to match, manuscript titles to spine; ownership inscription ‘Dom. Prof. Rom. Soc. Jesu. Catal. Inscrip. Bibliot. Cõmun.’ to title of vol. II.
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Τα μεχρι νυν σωζομενα, απαντα … Opera, quae quidem extant, omnia, multis iam seculis desiderata atque a quam paucissimis hactenus visa, nuncque primum & Graece & Latine in lucem edita … Adiecta quoque sunt Eutocii Ascalonitae in eodem Archimedis libros commentaria, item Graece & Latine, nunquam antea excusa.
Editio princeps of the works of Archimedes, ‘the greatest mathematician and engineer of antiquity’ (PMM). Prior to this edition only a small tract in Latin translation, published in 1503, and a partial translation by Tartaglia, published in 1543, had appeared.
‘Archimedes – together with Newton and Gauss – is generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians the world has ever known, and if his influence had not been overshadowed at first by Aristotle, Euclid and Plato, the progress to modern mathematics might have been much faster. As it was, his influence began to take full effect only after the publication of this first printed edition which enabled Descartes, Galileo and Newton in particular to build on what he had begun’ (PMM).
The text was edited by Thomas Geschauf (or Venatorius, 1490–1551), a humanist scholar and preacher from Nuremberg and a close friend of Willibald Pirckheimer, with whom he had studied in Padua. Johann Regiomontanus had made a copy of the Jacobus Cremonensis translation of Archimedes when in Rome in the 1460s, making corrections and adding readings from other manuscripts, including a Greek manuscript owned by Cardinal Bessarion. His manuscript of the Latin Archimedes came into Pirckheimer’s possession and was then used by Geschauf for this edition.
The early sixth-century commentary by Eutocius, also provided in both Greek and Latin, gives both historical and mathematical context to the work of Archimedes.
USTC 612734; VD 16 A 3217; Adams A-1531; Dibner 137; Graesse I, p. 180; Horblit 5; PMM 72.