Textual Transmission & Critical Editions

Manuscript Tradition

The principal Greek codices of Proclus’s Commentary on Book I descend from Byzantine scholarly archetypes, led by Codex Monacensis Graecus 427 (M, 11th/12th century, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek), alongside Vatican, Laurentian, Bologna, Marcian, and Bodleian witnesses. All extant Greek manuscripts share small mechanical lacunae—most famously at the junction of Propositions I.36 and I.37 (Friedlein 403, 5).

Key Printed Editions & Translations

  1. Simon Grynaeus — Basel Editio Princeps (1533): Appended to Johann Herwagen’s editio princeps of the Greek Elements (Εὐκλείδου Στοιχείων βιβλ. ιε΄, Basel, 1533), Grynaeus printed Proclus’s Greek commentary from an imperfect Oxford manuscript containing numerous omissions and corruptions. Grynaeus’s pagination is preserved in the outer margin of Friedlein (G.).

  2. Franciscus Barocius — Padua Latin Translation (1560): The Venetian patrician and mathematician Francesco Barozzi (Barocius) collated six Greek manuscripts in Crete, Venice, and Bologna to publish his landmark Latin translation (Padua, 1560), restoring major passages missing from the 1533 Basel edition and supplying clear geometric diagrams (B. pagination in Friedlein).

  3. Thomas Taylor — London English Translation (1788–1789 / 1792): Working from Grynaeus’s Greek text supplemented continuously by Barocius’s Latin edition, the English Platonist Thomas Taylor published the first translation into any modern vernacular in two quarto volumes (London, 1788–1789, reissued 1792; Project Gutenberg #74253 and #79455).

  4. Gottfried Friedlein — Leipzig Teubner Critical Greek Edition (1873): Collating Monacensis 427 (M) and its sister witnesses directly against Grynaeus and Barocius, Gottfried Friedlein established the authoritative critical Greek text (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1873, pp. 1–436, Indices pp. 437–507; CTS urn:cts:greekLit:tlg4036.tlg011.opp-grc1), whose page-and-line numbers form the universal scholarly standard across Sir Thomas Heath (geometor/euclid), Petrus Hoenen (geometor/hoenen), and this Codex.