Archimedes: The palimpsest and the tradition

Byzantinische Zeitschrift

Volumn 92, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 89-101

  Wilson, N G ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 8644288768     PISSN: 00077704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1515/byzs.1999.92.1.89     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. In the account that follows reference is made to the first printed description of the manuscript, which was given by A. I. Papadopoulos-Kerameus in his catalogue of the libraries belonging to the Jerusalem Patriarchate, vol. IV, St Petersburg 1899, pp. 329-331 (the MS. had the shelf-mark 355)
2. R, followed by his three-volume Teubner edition Archimedis opera omnia cum commentariis Eutocii (Leipzig 1910, 1913, 1915; there is a corrected reprint of 1972 with a few adjustments by E. S. Stamatis).
3. I refer to the hands studies by Giancarlo Prato, Scrittura e Civiltà 3 (1979) 151-193
4. reprinted in his Studi di paleografia greca (Spoleto 1994), 73-114 (with 24 plates).
5. For a recent study of the quires in Greek MSS. sec J. Irigoin in P. Hoffmann (ed.), Recherches de codicologie comparée (Paris 1998), pp. 1-19, esp. 6-7.
6. The value of the diagrams has perhaps been underestimated in general in past work on the transmission of Greek texts. A partial exception is the reference to diagrams in W. R. Knorr, Textual studies in ancient and medieval geometry (Boston 1989), 432-3, 529 n. 22.
7. Oddly enough, Archimedes is not mentioned in the wide-ranging study of illustration in ancient texts by K. Weitzmann, Ancient book illumination (Cambridge, Mass. 1959). Note, however, the same author's Illustrations in roll and codex (Princeton 1947), where on p. 120 he refers to the presence of diagrams for Euclid's Elements both in text and commentary as seen in the famous Oxford MS. D'Orviile 301 (dated A.D. 888); he should have taken the opportunity to remark on the presence of diagrams in two papyri of the Elements, P. Oxy. 29 (saec. III/1V) and P. Fay. 9 (saec. H); with regard to the latter, the editors Grenfell & Hunt observe that the diagram is at the end of the proof, whereas it would usually be at the beginning;
8. see Fayum towns and their papyri (London 1900), 96-99).
9. Illustrated as plate 37 in K. & S. Lake, Dated Greek minuscule manuscripts to the year 1200 (Boston 1934-39)
10. and in plate 5 of A. D. Komines, Facsimiles of dated Patmian codices (Athens 1970).
11. Discussed by Weitzmann, op. cit., 14, 97, 99, and see esp. figure 97; also by Z. Kádár, Survivals of Greek zoological illuminations in Byzantine manuscripts (Budapest 1978), 37-43, with plates 1-2.
12. E. M. Thompson & R. C. Jebb, Facsimile of the Laurentian manuscript of Sophocles (London 1885);
13. L'Eschilo laurenziano (Florence 1896);
14. the Sophocleari portion is conveniently illustrated in plates I-II of A. Turyn, Studies in the Byzantine manuscript tradition of the tragedies of Sophocles (Urbana 1952),
15. and Abb. 56 of H. Hunger et al., Geschichte der Textüberlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur, I (Zürich 1961) 277.
16. Ed. M. Clagett, Archimedes in the middle ages II (Madison 1976).
17. The most convenient modern account of it is given by E. J. Dijksterhuis, Archimedes (Copenhagen 1956), pp. 408-412.
18. M. R. Cohen & I. E. Drabkin, A source book in Greek science (Cambridge, Mass. 1958) p. 69 n. 1.
19. This statement is in Eutocius, ed. Heiberg (1915) p. 130 I. 19.
20. For a slightly more detailed account see N. G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium (ed. 2, London 1996) 45-6.
21. th century.
22. On the other hand, a slavish or even a moderately close imitation of an early script is difficult to reconcile with the claim, made originally by C. Graux, cited by Heiberg, Philologus 42 (1884) 435, that the scribe was the well-known copyist John Scutariota, active 1442-94.
23. This identification is reapeated in some of the modern literature, e.g. M. Vogel & V. Gardthausen, Die griechischen Schreiber des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Leipzig 1909) 198;
24. P. L. Rose, The Italian Renaissance of Mathematics (Geneva 1974) 63 at n. 91;
25. E. B. Fryde, Greek manuscripts in the private library of the Medici 1469-1510 (Aberystwyth 1996) 690.
26. The most spectacular case of successful imitation of an early hand by a Renaissance copyist is found in MS. Vat. Pal. gr. 186 of Apollonius Rhodius, discussed by J. Irigoin, Illinois Classical Studies 6 (1981) 416-29 with 3 plates; he notes that it belonged to Giannozzo Manetti (d. 1459) and cannot have been produced before the arrival of the exemplar, Laurentianus 32.9, in Florence in 1424.
27. See E. Mioni, Codices graeci manuscripti Bibliothecae Divi Marci Venetiarum, Thesaurus antiquus II (Rome 1985) 13;
28. E. Gamillscheg, with D. Harlfinger & P. Eleuteri, Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten II (Vienna 1997) 63.
29. See plates I-IV in J. Diggle, Euripides' Phaethon (Cambridge 1970), with the n. on p. viii about the difficulty of achieving satisfactory plates even from good photographs made under ultra-violet light.
30. A full reproduction with commentary was issued in S. G. Daitz, The Jersualem Palimpsest of Euripides (Berlin 1970). In this case the ultra-violet technique gave better results, and it was in no way Daitz's fault that the benefits for the editor of the plays were slight.
31. On Vat. gr. 1552 see C. Giannelli, Codices vaticani graeci 1485-1683 (Vatican City 1950);
32. his view of the origin of the MS. was supported by R. Devreesse, Introduction à l'étude des manuscrits grecs (Paris 1954) 196 n. 7 and Les manuscrits grecs de l'Italie méridionale (Studi e Testi 183) (Vatican City 1955) 59 n. 2. The formulae for exorcism published by A. Strittmatter, Orientalia Christiana no. 66, vol. 20 part 3 (1930) 172-8, do not coincide with the contents of the palimpsest but are transmitted in a number of MSS. of diverse provenance, so that they cannot be used to support the view that the palimpsest is from the Italo-Greek area.
33. See P. E. Easterling, Scriptorium 16 (1962) pp. 302, 307, who did not identify the text; in fact it is from On the sphere and Cylinder I 35-37, ed. Heiberg, vol. I pp. 132-138, with lacunae due to the loss of one half of the original leaf.
34. Described by I. Ševěenko, Scriptorium 18 (1964) 55-80.
35. D. Broia, C. Faraggiana di Sarzana & S. Lucà, Manoscritti palinsesti criptensi: lettura digitale sulla banda dell'invisibile (= Quaderni della Facoltà di coiiservazione dei beni culturali di Ravenna, 2) (Ravenna - Parma 1998). The texts selected for the experiments included the fragment of Malalas' chronicle, and the improvement in legibility is little short of amazing. One interesting fact to bear in mind is that the Grottaferrata documents had been treated with chemical agents, which is not the case with the Archimedes. This might have been expected to reduce the value of the new method, but it has not. It seems to me quite likely that the technique employed by the Italian firm of Fotoscientifica of Parma is different from those used in America by Christie's, the Octavo Corporation of Palo Alto, the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Xerox Corporation.