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26
ARCHIMEDES
private hands. In 1491 it belonged to Georgius Yalla, who
translated from it the portions published in his posthumous
work l)e expetendis et fugiendis rebus (1501), and intended to
publish the whole of Archimedes with Eutocius’s commen
taries. On Valla’s death in 1500 it was bought by Albertus
Pius, Prince of Carpi, passing in 1530 to his nephew, Rodolphus
Pius, in whose possession it remained till 1544. At some
time between 1544 and 15 64 it disappeared, leaving no
trace.
The greater part of A was translated into Latin in 1269
by William of Moerbeke at the Papal Court at Viterbo. This
translation, in William’s own hand, exists at Rome (Cod.
Ottobon. lat, 1850, Heiberg’s B), and is one of our prime
sources, for, although the translation was hastily done and
the translator sometimes misunderstood the Greek, he followed
its wording so closely that his version is, for purposes of
collation, as good as a Greek manuscript. William used also,
for his translation, another manuscript from the same library
which contained works not included in A. This manuscript
was a collection of works on mechanics and optics; William
translated from it the two Books On Floating Bodies, and it
also contained the Plane Equilibriums and the Quadrature
of the Parabola, for which books William used both manu
scripts.
The four most important extant Greek manuscripts (except
C, the Constantinople manuscript discovered in 1906) were
copied from A. The earliest is E, the Venice manuscript
(Marcianus 305), which was written betw r een the years 1449
and 1472. The next is D, the Florence manuscript (Laurent.
XXVIII. 4), which was copied in 1491 for Angelo Poliziano,
permission having been obtained with some difficulty in con
sequence of the jealousy with which Valla guarded his treasure.
The other two are G (Paris. 2360) copied from A after it had
passed to Albertus Pius, and H (Paris. 2361) copied in 1544
by Christopherus Auverus for Georges d’Armagnac, Bishop
of Rodez. These four manuscripts, with the translation of
William of Moerbeke (B), enable the readings of A to be
inferred.
A Latin translation was made at the instance of Pope
Nicholas V about the year 1450 by Jacobus Cremonensis.
It was made
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1 The Work.
writer in 1897