(Article I.16.) Archimedes – Knowledge and Lore from Latin Antiquity to the Outgoing European Renaissance

Abstract

With Apuleius and Augustine as the only partial exceptions, Latin Antiquity did not know Archimedes as a mathematician but only as an ingenious engineer and astronomer, serving his city and killed by fatal distraction when in the end the city was taken by ruse. The Latin Middle Ages forgot even much of that, and when Archimedean mathematics was translated in the 12th and 13th centuries, almost no integration with the traditional image of the person took place. Petrarca knew the civically useful engineer and the astrologer (!); no other 14th-century Humanist seems to know about Archimedes in any role. In the 15th century, however, “higher artisans” with Humanist connections or education took interest in Archimedes the technician and started identifying with him. In mid-century, a new translation of most works from the Greek was made by Jacopo Cremonensis, and Regiomontanus and a few other mathematicians began resurrecting the image of the geometer, yet without emulating him in their own work. Giorgio Valla’s posthumous De expetendis et fugiendis rebus from 1501 marks a watershed. Valla drew knowledge of the person as well as his works from Proclus and Pappus, thus integrating person and works. Over the century, a number of editions also appeared, the editio princeps in 1544, and mathematical work following in the footsteps of Archimedes was made by Maurolico, Commandino and others. The Northern Renaissance only discovered Archimedes in the 1530s, and for long only superficially. The first to express a (purely ideological) high appreciation was Ramus in 1569, and the first to make creative use of his mathematics was Viète in the 1590s.

Originally published in Ganita Bhāratī 39 (2017), 1–22

Small corrections of style made tacitly A few additions touching the substance in 〚…〛

marshall clagett and marie-dominique chenu in memoriam