THE TEXT OF THE CONICS 
127 
a, and we 
is equally 
be found 
3S on the 
from any 
lonius, to 
us except 
he went 
with the 
and that 
Euergetes 
stronomer 
reign of 
that our 
3urth and 
-197 b.c.) 
He was 
chimedes. 
i acquain- 
cated the 
diey have 
ents of a 
id as the 
ers regu- 
Pappus 
commen- 
Eutocius 
ooks and 
ad before 
k, and he 
l had got 
iplains in 
The edition of Eutocius suffered interpolations which were 
probably made in the ninth century when, under the auspices 
of Leon, mathematical studies were revived at Constantinople; 
for it was at that date that the uncial manuscripts were 
written, from which our best manuscripts, Y (= Cod. Vat. gr. 
206 of the twelfth to thirteenth century) for the Conics, and 
W (= Cod. Vat. gr. 204 of the tenth century) for Eutocius, 
were copied. 
Only the first four Books survive in Greek; the eighth 
Book is altogether lost, but the three Books V-VII exist in 
Arabic. It was Ahmad and al-Hasan, two sons of Muh, b. 
Musa b. Shakir, who first contemplated translating the Conics 
into Arabic. They were at first deterred by the bad state of 
their manuscripts; but afterwards Ahmad obtained in Syria 
a copy of Eutocius’s edition of Books I-IV and had them 
translated by Hilal b. Abi Hilal al-Himsi (died 883/4). 
Books V-VII were translated, also for Ahmad, by Thabit 
b. Qurra( 826-901) from another manuscript. Nasiraddin’s 
recension of this translation of the seven Books, made in 1248, 
is represented by two copies in the Bodleian, one of the year 
1301 (No. 943) and the other of 1626 containing Books V-VII 
only (No. 885). 
A Latin translation of Books I-IV was published by 
Johannes Baptista Memus at Venice in 1537 ; but the first 
important edition was the translation by Commandinus 
(Bologna, 1566), which included the lemmas of Pappus and 
the commentary of Eutocius, and was the first attempt to 
make the book intelligible by means of explanatory notes. 
For the Greek text Commandinus used Cod. Marcianus 518 
and perhaps also Vat. gr. 205, both of which were copies of V, 
but not V itself. 
The first published version of Books V-VII was a Latin 
translation by Abraham Echellensis and Giacomo Alfonso * 
Borelli (Florence, 1661) of a reproduction of the Books written 
in 983 by Abu 1 Fath al-Isfahani. 
The editio princeps of the Greek text is the monumental 
work of Halley (Oxford, 1710). The original intention was 
that Gregory should edit the four Books extant in Greek, with 
Eutocius’s commentary and a Latin translation, and that 
Halley should translate Books V-VII from the Arabic into