Complete Extant Works of Hero of Alexandria, Vol. 3

The two works of Hero of Alexandria that I have joined in this volume are as easy to review as they are difficult to emend. For the entire record of both is contained in single manuscripts, which, while indeed ancient, are nonetheless both corrupt and incomplete. Understanding that this was the case, and despairing that any other ancient copies of them would ever be discovered, I felt that in preparing this edition my primary task was to record the text of those books faithfully. This is not because I believed the danger of conjecture should be avoided entirely, but so that every effort at emendation might be directed toward the authority of the most excellent or sole exemplar as if toward a certain standard.

I

The Dimetiendi rationes Principles of Measurement, a work of three books not previously edited—for the separate book on measurements is distinct from that which Fr. Hultsch included among the remnants of Hero on pp. 188–207—was supplied by the Constantinopolitan codex of the old palace no. 1. I see that this codex was mentioned by E. Miller in Confusaneis Graecis original: "Mélanges de littérature grecque" p. V and by Fr. Blass in Hermes vol. XXIII p. 222. It is made of parchment, with 112 leaves, 30 cm high and 22 cm wide, written in the 11th century in a clear and quite elegant hand, and distinguished by frequent geometric figures.1) Dethier attributed it to the 12th century; cf. P. Hunfalvy, Litterarische Berichte aus Ungarn II (1878) p. 565. The first leaf with the second, and the hundred and eleventh with the hundred and twelfth, form single binions, neither of which has been written upon; of the intermediate membranes, however, since four pairs of quaternions are bound together, fourteen small bodies of leaves are easily distinguished. Only the first leaves of these quaternions are marked with Greek numerals on the lower edge of each first page; but both these and all those that follow are found marked with tiny crosses in the left corner of the upper margin of each first page. Therefore, they are contained as follows: the first binion leaves 1–2, quaternion α leaves 3–10, β leaves 11–18, γ leaves 19–26, δ leaves 27–34, ε leaves 35–42, ς leaves 43–50, ζ leaves 51–58, η leaves 59–66, the ninth leaves 67–74, the tenth leaves 75–82, the eleventh leaves 83–90, the twelfth leaves 91–98, the thirteenth leaves 99–106, the fourteenth leaves 107–110, and the second binion leaves 111–112.