 |
ARCHIMEDES.
De iis quae vehuntur in aqua libri duo. Bologna, ex Officina Alexandri Benacii, 1565. [with]
COMMANDINO Federico. Liber de centro gravitatis solidorum. Bologna, ex officina Alexandri Benacii, 1565.
£5950.00
|
|
FIRST EDITIONS. 4to. ff. (iv) 43. (iv) 47 (i). Two works in one. Roman and Italic letter, a little Greek, titles slightly dusty and age yellowed, fine large historiated woodcut initials, numerous geometrical diagrams in text, some with printed florets. Later inoffensive paper restoration to upper margin and outer corner of C2-4 of vol. II, marginal faint spotting on second t-p, armorial bookplate of the Earls of Macclesfield on front pastedown, small armorial blindstamp at head of first t-p and following leaf. A very good, clean copy in C17th citron morocco, covers gilt double ruled, spine gilt in six compartments, edges tooled gilt, page edges sprinkled red. First edition of Archimedes' two great books on hydrostatics, on which all subsequent study of the subject was founded. It was edited by Federico Commandino, and here bound with one of Commandino's very few original scientific works, an elaborated system of theorems and proofs to determine the center of gravity of solid bodies of all shapes and sizes. Archimedes' work is in the first critical printed translation, based on the Latin translation of Moerbeke, the first book only had been published by Tartaglia in an uncritical Latin edition of 1543. The opening letter addressed to Cardinal Ranuccio Farnese mentions that no Greek manuscript of this work had ever come to light. In fact the Greek codex of Archimedes' 'Floating Bodies' was only discovered in 1906. Commandino extensively commented on and corrected the Latin text. "In particular the proof of proposition 2 in book II was incomplete, and Commandino filled it out. One step required knowing the location of the center of gravity of any segment of a parabolic conoid. No ancient treatment of such a problem was then known, and Commandino's was the first modern attempt to fill the existing gap" (DBS III p. 364).
Federico Commandino (1509-1575), from a noble family of Urbino, educated in Latin and Greek, studied philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua but he took his medical degree from the University of Ferrara. Gaining renown from his true vocation of editing, translating, and commenting on the classics of ancient Greek mathematics, he was designated private tutor and medical adviser of the Duke of Urbino and also taught mathematics to Guido Ubaldo da Monte and later his son. Commandino's editions and translations became the basis for almost all subsequent versions of the Greek mathematicians of antiquity and considerably advanced this aspect of Renaissance thought. Archimedes: BM STC It. p. 37. Adams A 1533. Riccardi I 42:5. Wightman n. 39. Graesse I p. 180. Commandino: BM STC It. p. 192. Adams C 2467. Riccardi I 361:4. Graesse II p. 236. Honeyman I 131. "A skilfull mathematical emendation of Moerbeke's translation" (D.S.B.).
SNL214.
|
|
|