Commentary on Euclid, referring to his discussion of man as a bipedal animal to illustrate his ideas on definitions, and his geometric works on the isosceles triangles and cones, as well as the work of Democritus, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [Italy (perhaps Bologna), fourteenth century] Two near-complete leaves (both recovered from use on book boards and hence trimmed at edges, one with little affect to text, the other with losses to second column and with small strip of a third leaf pasted to it), from a manuscript with double column, 52 lines in a small university hand with many abbreviations, quotations underlined in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, two ‘pointing finger’ symbols marking readings of interest, one large simple initial ‘C’ with linefiller in undulating red pen, numerous scuff marks, tears, folds and small holes, reverse of both leaves scrubbed blank, overall in fair and legible condition, 330 by 242 mm. and 297 by 198 mm. Euclid (fl. 300 BC.), ‘the father of geometry’, needs little introduction, and his magnum opus, Elements, served as the fundamental textbook of mathematics from the time of its writing to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Many of his works survived without naming him as their author, and the writer here refers to them by their content rather than authorship. It is the bringing together of his famous discussion of man as a bipedal animal (responding to Plato’s inadequate definition of man as a featherless biped, which was resoundly defeated by one of his students producing a plucked chicken) alongside his works on cones and isosceles triangles that ensure that what lay before the author of this commentary was a copy of Euclid’s works in Latin translation. The work on cones here is most probably drawn from the Elements, but serves as a reminder of the fragility of the transmission of knowledge from the Ancient World, as the little that is included in that text is all that survives of Euclid’s Conics (and was probably so by the end of the third century AD.). Democritus (c. 460-370 BC.) was an influential Ancient Greek philosopher of reportedly light and happy temperament. His work survives only now in fragments, but he is remembered as formulating an atomic theory of the universe, and as a pioneer of mathematics and geometry. His works were known to Aristotle, but so loathed by Plato that he tried to have them burnt. Both writers in any form are of great rarity on the market, and the Schoenberg database lists no manuscript of Euclid in a Western language on the open market since those in the Honeyman sale at Sotheby’s, 2 May 1979 (part III, lot 1085 and 1086), and another offered last by H.P. Kraus, cat. 155 (1980), no. 5. The same database lists only one manuscript to include any part of Democritus’ works on the open market, that obtained by Sir Thomas Phillipps in the Meerman sale in 1824; later his MS. 1540, and unrecorded since his death in 1872.
Commentary on Euclid, referring to his discussion of man as a bipedal animal to illustrate his ideas on definitions, and his geometric works on the isosceles triangles and cones, as well as the work of Democritus, in Latin, decorated manuscript on parchment [Italy (perhaps Bologna), fourteenth century] Two near-complete leaves (both recovered from use on book boards and hence trimmed at edges, one with little affect to text, the other with losses to second column and with small strip of a third leaf pasted to it), from a manuscript with double column, 52 lines in a small university hand with many abbreviations, quotations underlined in red, paragraph marks in red or blue, two ‘pointing finger’ symbols marking readings of interest, one large simple initial ‘C’ with linefiller in undulating red pen, numerous scuff marks, tears, folds and small holes, reverse of both leaves scrubbed blank, overall in fair and legible condition, 330 by 242 mm. and 297 by 198 mm. Euclid (fl. 300 BC.), ‘the father of geometry’, needs little introduction, and his magnum opus, Elements, served as the fundamental textbook of mathematics from the time of its writing to the eighteenth or nineteenth century. Many of his works survived without naming him as their author, and the writer here refers to them by their content rather than authorship. It is the bringing together of his famous discussion of man as a bipedal animal (responding to Plato’s inadequate definition of man as a featherless biped, which was resoundly defeated by one of his students producing a plucked chicken) alongside his works on cones and isosceles triangles that ensure that what lay before the author of this commentary was a copy of Euclid’s works in Latin translation. The work on cones here is most probably drawn from the Elements, but serves as a reminder of the fragility of the transmission of knowledge from the Ancient World, as the little that is included in that text is all that survives of Euclid’s Conics (and was probably so by the end of the third century AD.). Democritus (c. 460-370 BC.) was an influential Ancient Greek philosopher of reportedly light and happy temperament. His work survives only now in fragments, but he is remembered as formulating an atomic theory of the universe, and as a pioneer of mathematics and geometry. His works were known to Aristotle, but so loathed by Plato that he tried to have them burnt. Both writers in any form are of great rarity on the market, and the Schoenberg database lists no manuscript of Euclid in a Western language on the open market since those in the Honeyman sale at Sotheby’s, 2 May 1979 (part III, lot 1085 and 1086), and another offered last by H.P. Kraus, cat. 155 (1980), no. 5. The same database lists only one manuscript to include any part of Democritus’ works on the open market, that obtained by Sir Thomas Phillipps in the Meerman sale in 1824; later his MS. 1540, and unrecorded since his death in 1872.
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