Hero's Belopoeica (Treatise on Artillery Construction)

DIELS and E. SCHRAMM:

We received valuable help from Mr. Richard Schöne, who kindly provided us with his personal copy of Wescher’s edition. It contains not only some corrections to Wescher’s collation a line-by-line comparison of manuscripts to identify differences of Manuscript M, but also his own contributions to the emendation the process of correcting or improving a text of the work, which we have gratefully utilized. During the proofreading process, Hermann Schöne’s collation of Manuscript M also became accessible to us. We thank him from the heart as well. As a rule, variations in spelling have not been included in the critical notes.

Heron is the most useful of all the ancient military writers who have written about artillery; since the text and drawings complement one another, one obtains a fairly clear picture of the engines of war. Nevertheless, without a precise knowledge of Philon and Vitruvius two other major authorities on ancient engineering and mechanics, he must remain partially incomprehensible. Only the continuous comparison of all these writers, alongside the reconstruction and testing of every single part, can provide complete clarity.

The technical terms of antiquity have been translated into their correct modern technical equivalents whenever possible. Where this was not possible, the ancient terms have been retained—for example, peritret the frame or perforated plate that held the hair-springs in a catapult and so on. The term diostra the sliding trough of a catapult could also have remained, but since we have a commonly known instrument in the slide rule original German: "Rechenschieber" whose slider can be quite well compared with the diostra, this translation was chosen.

EXPLANATION OF ABBREVIATIONS.