Archimede Latino (original) (raw)

2012, ARCHIMEDE LATINO IACOPO DA SAN CASSIANO E IL CORPVS ARCHIMEDEO ALLA METÀ DEL QUATTROCENTO

In 1544 the Greek-Latin editio princeps of most of the Archimedean texts known today and the related commentaries by Eutocius was published: this is the Latin Archimedes who, between the end of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was known and studied by Galileo and inspired a radical change in the way of conceiving mathematics. In order to remedy the lack of attention paid to the true architect of the Archimedean rediscovery, Iacopo da San Cassiano, the first part of the volume follows his movements between the Studio of Pavia, the Gonzaga court and the curia of Niccolò V, striving to enlight on the acquaintances in which the translation of the Archimedean corpus was maturing and on the contexts in which, in the second half of the fifteenth century, it spread. Emerges from all that the vivacity of the Pavia and Mantuan academic environment, as well as that of the humanistic circles of Milan, Bologna, Ferrara and Rome, the versatility of the circle of Bessarione, the philological acribia of the Regiomontano, and the scientific curiosity of a Piero della Francesca, of a Francesco dal Borgo or a Leonardo da Vinci. The second part of the volume examines the contemporary evidence on the Latin version and its manuscript tradition. The analysis of the latter allows to identify among the surviving codes the primum exemplar of the translation, that is the autograph draft of Iacopo; the copy on which Regiomontanus -- starting from a codex owned by Bessarion now preserved in the Marciana National Library -- carried out the revision of the text and of the geometric figures which merged into the princeps of 1544; and also the two codes on which Francesco dal Borgo and Piero della Francesca studied Archimedes, verifying the geometric constructions in close collaboration. According to J.L. Heiberg, Iacopo would have based his work on a code of the IX century, later owned by Giorgio Valla and today known as codex A. According to Marshall Clagett, he used also the medieval translation of William of Moerbeke. The examination of these theses and the parallel study of various places in Jacopo's version and the corresponding lesson of the other Archimedean witnesses, to whom the third part of the volume is dedicated, leads instead to the conclusion that he not only disregards the precedent of William, but it is based on a Greek text different and independent from the one carried by Valla's Byzantine code. For this reason the Iacopo's translation is certainly of interest also in relation to a more satisfactory reconstruction of the text and of Archimedes' thought itself. The critical edition of Circuli dimensio and Quadratura parabolæ, housed in the fourth and last part of the volume, gives the reader the ease of evaluating the many unpublished aspects of this complex framework. Accompanied by a triple critical apparatus, by an Italian translation and by succinct commentary notes, it not only allows to grasp Iacopo's hesitations, but also the differences of its version with respect to the surviving Greek tradition, but it highlights the main characters of the subsequent transmission of the text.