The Medieval Tradition of Dimension of the Circle, Prop. 1

Abstract

Just as among the ancient commentators the Dimension of the Circle was the most familiar and frequently cited of Archimedes’ works, so also did this writing attract a wide range of translations, commentaries and adaptations in the Middle Ages. The source of the Arabic tradition was a translation made in the 9th century, presumably by Thâbit ibn Qurra.¹ Adaptations were presented by the Banû Mûsâ (9th century), Abu ’l-Rashîd ^cabd al-Hâdî (12th century?), Nasîr al-Dîn al-Tûsî (13th century), and others.² A Hebrew version, perhaps due to Qalonymos b. Qalonymos (early 14th century), was based on the same Arabic.³ In the same textual line were two Latin versions from the 12th century, one attributed to Plato of Tivoli, the other to Gerard of Cremona.⁴ Gerard’s version spawned a host of expanded versions and commentaries among the Latin scholastics.⁵ Another Latin version, falling directly in the line of the Greek tradition of the text, was included by Willem of Moerbeke in 1269 among his series of Archimedes translations; his Greek source has been shown to be the same manuscript (Heiberg’s A) underlying the Renaissance copies on which the extant text of the corpus is based.⁶