Campanus, Tetragonismus, Venice, 1503, old boards

CAMPANUS, ARCHIMEDES, BOETHIUS

Tetragonismus idest circuli quadratura per Campanum archimedem Syracusanum atque boetium mathematicae perspicacissimos adinventa [edited by Luca Gaurico]. (Venice: Giovanni Battista Sessa, 28 August 1503)

4to (195 x 140mm.), large woodcut on title-page depicting Archimedes standing on a map of the world and looking at the constellations in the heavens, woodcut device at foot of title-page, woodcut initials, smaller Lombard initials, woodcut diagrams, woodcut printer's device beneath colophon, later boards, green morocco spine label, traces of index tabs, cut close at head, small paper repair at foot of title-page, small marginal tear at foot of e1

THE FIRST WORK BY ARCHIMEDES TO APPEAR IN PRINT; his treatises included in this short work, Quadratura paraboli and Quadratura circuli, are in the Latin translation of William of Moerbeke made in the thirteenth century. Gaurico, the editor, was teaching astrology at the University of Padua in 1503; he subsequently produced numerous works on prognostications and astrology. A full edition of Archimedes had to wait until the 1544 Basel edition containing both the original Greek and a Latin translation. The tracts are accompanied by similar works by the thirteenth-century Campanus of Novara and by Boethius on the quadrature of the circle.

LITERATURE:

Edit16 8810; Riccardi i, 40; Sander 1574

PROVENANCE:

Progel, bookplate