The Book of Mechanics

...of Archimedes are held in the present work, they wish the entire force of them to be accepted as derived from him. And lest anything that could benefit students of the mechanical faculty be omitted, it was decided to contribute some work to the interpretation of these books of Archimedes; and we shall seem to have done enough for ourselves if at least students recognize that we have followed in the footsteps of Archimedes. And although this work was illustrated with some commentaries by Eutocius of Ascalon, because many things still remain abstruse due to the obscurity of the writings of Archimedes, and not entirely accessible to everyone—especially those who are experts in Greek letters—since this book, translated into Latin, is in many places obscure and, in most others, in some way defective (as is deservedly suspected), so that it still seems to lie in darkness; and furthermore, the printed Greek codex which we have followed seems to require some correction in many places; therefore, we did not wish to desist from performing such a duty: but rather to translate these books into the Latin language at the same time, and render them illustrated with commentaries. Especially since from this point, a safe approach is opened to the mechanical discipline. Therefore, so that the mind of this most illustrious mathematician may be rendered as perspicuous as possible through our best efforts, and those desirous of this science may labor less in acquiring these most beautiful theorems, it seemed opportune for us to depart somewhat, for the present, from the common manner of interpreting.

declaration of this paraphrase.

For those who have interpreted mathematical matters have placed their commentaries separately from the demonstrations; we, however, have inserted our own words into the words of Archimedes himself, and this only within the demonstrations themselves, not in the propositions and other things of that kind, with this distinction clearly maintained, so that what are Archimedes' (in these or those marks of letters) may be recognized and understood to be of Archimedes alone. Those things, however, which are of a different character, such as what are of this form, are always to be considered as our own. And as far as could be done, we have endeavored to explain clearly and to amend all words that seemed to us to need some declaration or correction (those things, however, being omitted which are of little or no importance, such as the changing of letters and other things of that kind). To which I have also applied this...