indietro

Archimedes, Opera, Latin translation by W. Of Moerbeke (Codex O)

    • Data:
      13th century
    • Materiali:
      Parchment manuscript
    • Dimensioni:
      base 19.5 cm, height 26.5 cm
    • Collocazione:
      Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana
    • Inventario:
      Ottob. Lat. 1850
  • Archimedes, Opera, Latin translation by W. Of Moerbeke (Codex O)

After settling in the papal court of Viterbo, the Flemish chaplain William of Moerbeke translated numerous ancient scientific texts into Latin, including the works of Archimedes, which he translated from Greek from two source codices known as A and B in 1269. The former had been written in Constantinople in the 9th century but the origin of the latter, which disappeared in 1311, is unknown. The Moerbeke translation also contains the treatise On Floating Bodies, present only in Codex B. News of Codex A is interrupted around the mid-16th century. Copied several times in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was the basis of the editio princeps of Archimedes' works, published in Basel in 1544.