Complete Extant Works of Hero of Alexandria, Vol. 3

fol. 61r–62v Euclidean Linear Measurements.
fol. 63r–63v Geometry of Hero (in an erasure, hand 2).
fol. 64r–66r Didymus of Alexandria on the measurement of all kinds of wood.
fol. 66v has been left blank.
fol. 67r–110v Metrics of Hero.

From this table, it is easy to see the reasons that led the scribe to use a different method for the eighth and fourteenth quaternions than in the others. For when he wished to begin the latter part of the codex—destined for the three-part work of Hero—from a new quaternion (fol. 67 ff.), he cut out the last leaf of the preceding bundle, which consisted of fols. 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, and b (as the material was missing, it had been left blank). Later, so that nothing would appear to be missing from the original integrity, he inserted one leaf, or rather a half-binion (fol. 63, detached from leaf a), on which he wrote with his own hand, though with slightly different ink, a metrological table inscribed Geometrical Matters. The same scribe, while occupied with copying the Principles of Measurement, and seeing after calculating the number of lines that four membranes of the fourteenth quaternion would be superfluous, took a prudent step to accommodate the bookbinder: he did not cut out the four extreme leaves, but the third and fourth (c, d) and the seventh and eighth (e, f).

The Constantinopolitan book was written by an unlearned scribe (hand 1). Because he did not understand what he was copying from his exemplars, he fell into many errors, but he was free of fraud and deceit. That the copy of Hero’s work which he had at hand was both written in uncial letters and worn and eaten away in many places is gathered from the large number of errors requiring paleographic correction and from the frequency of lacunae indicated by the scribe himself. From the same source, some ancient scholia appear to have been transcribed, which were drawn in the margins of the codex by the scribe himself, but in a cursive script.