page_title: Apollonius of Perga
section_title: Early printed editions
hierarchical_section_title: Apollonius of Perga / Documented works of Apollonius / Early printed editions
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Francisci Maurolyci Messanensis, Emendatio, et restitutio conicorum Apollonij Pergaei nunc primum typis excusae, vbi primi quatuor eiusdem Apollonij libri mendis, quibus foede scatebant, expurgantur, nouisque interdum demonstrationibus illustrantur: quintus vero sextusue liber, quorum tituli dumtaxat habebantur, maximo labore, summaque industria denuo restituuntur. - Messanae&#160;: typis heredum Petri Breae, 1654. - [8], 5-192 p.&#160;: ill.&#160;; 2° .
context_page_description: Apollonius of Perga was a Greek geometer and astronomer known for his theories on the topic of conic sections. Beginning from the theories of Euclid and Archimedes on the topic, he brought them to the state they were in just before the invention of analytic geometry. His definitions of the terms ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola are the ones in use today.
  Apollonius worked on many other topics, including astronomy. Most of the work has not survived except in fragmentary references in other authors. His hypothesis of eccentric orbits to explain the apparently aberrant motion of the planets, commonly believed until the Middle Ages, was superseded during the Renaissance.
context_section_description: The early printed editions began for the most part in the 16th century. At that time, scholarly books were expected to be in Latin, today's New Latin. As almost no manuscripts were in Latin, the editors of the early printed works translated from the Greek or Arabic to Latin. The Greek and Latin were typically juxtaposed, but only the Greek is original, or else was restored by the editor to what he thought was original. Critical apparatuses were in Latin. The ancient commentaries, however, were in ancient or medieval Greek. Only in the 18th and 19th centuries did modern languages begin to appear. A representative list of early printed editions is given below. The originals of these printings are rare and expensive. For modern editions in modern languages see the references.
  Pergaeus, Apollonius (1566). Conicorum libri quattuor: una cum Pappi Alexandrini lemmatibus, et commentariis Eutocii Ascalonitae. Sereni Antinensis philosophi libri duo ... quae omnia nuper Federicus Commandinus Vrbinas mendis quampluris expurgata e Graeco conuertit, & commentariis illustrauit (in Ancient Greek and Latin). Bononiae: Ex officina Alexandri Benatii. A presentation of the first four books of Conics in Greek by Fredericus Commandinus with his own translation into Latin and the commentaries of Pappus of Alexandria, Eutocius of Ascalon and Serenus of Antinouplis.
  Apollonius; Barrow, I (1675). Apollonii conica: methodo nova illustrata, & succinctè demonstrata (in Latin). Londini: Excudebat Guil. Godbid, voeneunt apud Robertum Scott, in vico Little Britain. Translation by Barrow from ancient Greek to Neo-Latin of the first four books of Conics. The copy linked here, located in the Boston Public Library, once belonged to John Adams.
  Apollonius; Pappus; Halley, E. (1706). Apollonii Pergaei de sectione rationis libri duo: Ex Arabico ms. Latine versi. Accedunt ejusdem de sectione spatii libri duo restituti (in Latin). Oxonii. A presentation of two lost but reconstructed works of Apollonius. De Sectione Rationis comes from an unpublished manuscript in Arabic in the Bodleian Library at Oxford originally partially translated by Edward Bernard but interrupted by his death. It was given to Edmond Halley, professor, astronomer, mathematician and explorer, after whom Halley's Comet later was named. Unable to decipher the corrupted text, he abandoned it. Subsequently, David Gregory (mathematician) restored the Arabic for Henry Aldrich, who gave it again to Halley. Learning Arabic, Halley created De Sectione Rationis and as an added emolument for the reader created a Neo-Latin translation of a version of De Sectione Spatii reconstructed from Pappus Commentary on it. The two Neo-Latin works and Pappus' ancient Greek commentary were bound together in the single volume of 1706. The author of the Arabic manuscript is not known. Based on a statement that it was written under the "auspices" of Al-Ma'mun, Latin Almamon, astronomer and Caliph of Baghdad in 825, Halley dates it to 820 in his "Praefatio ad Lectorem."
  Apollonius; Alexandrinus Pappus; Halley, Edmond; Eutocius; Serenus (1710). Apollonii Pergaei Conicorum libri octo, et Sereni Antissensis De sectione cylindri & coni libri duo (PDF) (in Latin and Ancient Greek). Oxoniae: e Theatro Sheldoniano. Encouraged by the success of his translation of David Gregory's emended Arabic text of de Sectione rationis, published in 1706, Halley went on to restore and translate into Latin Apollonius’ entire elementa conica. Books I-IV had never been lost. They appear with the Greek in one column and Halley's Latin in a parallel column. Books V-VI came from a windfall discovery of a previously unappreciated translation from Greek to Arabic that had been purchased by the antiquarian scholar Jacobus Golius in Aleppo in 1626. On his death in 1696 it passed by a chain of purchases and bequests to the Bodleian Library (originally as MS Marsh 607, dated 1070). The translation, dated much earlier, comes from the branch of Almamon's school entitled the Banū Mūsā, “sons of Musa,” a group of three brothers, who lived in the 9th century
caption: 1654 edition of Conica by Apollonius edited by Francesco Maurolico
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