This is the most important 17th-century edition of Archimedes' works, translated into Latin from the Greek and with a commentary by David Rivault. The numerous illustrations helped bring it prominence during the Scientific Revolution, when the rediscovery of classical mathematics was key to the investigations of the new 17th-century sciences. A mathematician and humanist who spoke Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, Rivault was the mathematical tutor of Louis XIII. Read and studied by Descartes, this edition formed the basis for the German one, edited by J.C. Sturm and published in 1670.