Euclid in the Original Greek
EUCLID [graecé:] Elementa geometria. Basle, Johannes Herwagen, 1533
Folio (296 x 197 mm), pp [xii] 268; 115 [1] with printer's device on title and last leaf, numerous woodcut diagrams in the text, woodcut border around opening page of the text; title a trifle dust-soiled, small portion of blank corner of first three leaves repaired, a very attractive copy in eighteenth-century French mottled sheep, inscription on title 'Collegii Lemovicensis Societ. Jesu Catal. inscriptus, 1672'. £28,500
Editio princeps of Euclid's Elements, and of Proclus' commentary on the first book of the Elements. The first printing of Euclid was a Latin translation in 1482, but the original Greek text had to wait a further fifty five years before its appearance. The Greek text was edited by Simon Grynaeus, a German Protestant theologian and philologist. The printer Johann Herwagen introduced the innovation in this edition of printing Euclid's diagrams within the text.
The commentary by Proclus on the first book of Euclid's Elements is the first printing of the earliest work on the philosophy of mathematics. It was written in the fifth century by the Neoplatonist mathematician and philosopher Proclus who as 'the last great systematiser of the Greek philosophical inheritance ... exerted a powerful influence on medieval and Renaissance thought' (Oxford classical dictionary).
'Because of his interest in the principles underlying mathematical thought and their relation to ultimate philosophical principles, Proclus' commentary is a notable - and also the earliest - contribution to the philosophy of mathematics. Its numerous references to the views of Euclid's predecessors and successors, many of them otherwise unknown to us, render it an invaluable source for the history of the science' (DSB).
Adams E980; Thomas-Sandford 7; Norman 730; Stillwell 210
£28500
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