Greek & Arabic Textual Transmission¶
The survival of Apollonius’s Conics across twenty-two centuries is one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of science:
Alexandrian & Late-Antique Commentators (4th–6th c. CE): - Pappus of Alexandria (c. 320 CE) preserved 70+ lemmas to all eight Books of the Conics in Synagoge VII (Hultsch 1877). - Hypatia of Alexandria (d. 415 CE) authored a lost Greek commentary on the Conics. - Eutocius of Ascalon (c. 510 CE) edited Books I–IV with an extensive Greek commentary dedicated to Anthemius of Tralles. Because Byzantine scriptoria copied Eutocius’s four-book school edition, only Books I–IV survived in Greek (preserved chiefly in Codex Vaticanus Graecus 206, 12th–13th c., edited critically by J. L. Heiberg in 1891–1893).
Ninth-Century Baghdad Recovery of Books V–VII: - In Abbasid Baghdad, the three brothers Banū Mūsā acquired a damaged seven-book Greek manuscript lacking Book VIII. Unable at first to decipher its corrupt diagrams and technical shorthand, Ahmad ibn Mūsā located in Damascus a copy of Eutocius’s recension of Books I–IV. - Using Books I–IV as a Rosetta Stone, Hilāl ibn Abī Hilāl al-Ḥimṣī translated Books I–IV into Arabic, while the great geometer Thābit ibn Qurra (836–901 CE) translated Books V–VII—rescuing Apollonius’s theories of normals, evolutes, similarity, and conjugate diameters from total oblivion! (Copied in 1024 CE by Ibn al-Haytham, and preserved in Bodleian MS Marsh 667.)
Halley’s 1710 Oxford Folio: - After Golius brought the Arabic manuscript to Leiden and Edward Bernard began transcribing Bodleian Marsh 667, Savilian Professor Edmond Halley mastered Arabic, published De Sectione Rationis (1706), and in 1710 printed at Oxford the monumental folio Apollonii Pergaei Conicorum Libri Octo (Halley 1710), reuniting Greek Books I–IV with Latin Books V–VII and a restored Book VIII.