Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements

He made it public once it was converted. While it was being printed, he saw two other Greek copies: one in Venice in the library of Saints John and Paul, and another at Padua from the library of Joannes Vincentius Pinellus of Genoa, and he used them to complete the work. He proclaims, by his own right, that the most useful and most luminous volume of Proclus Diadochus, having been snatched from near destruction, had risen up like a renewed Phoenix. Everyone who has approached these commentaries of Proclus has used his most excellent work, even if they found the thoughts and subject matter—rather than the words themselves—more obscured than revealed by the Greek copy. Regarding this matter, it will be sufficient to bring forward the testimony of one Englishman. For Taylor, in the preface to his English version, confesses that the difficulties of his undertaking could only be overcome by Barocius’s book, and in doubtful places he follows no other guide than Barocius.

However, it could not be that the Greek words were not also desired. That particular chapter on Euclid and on the famous mathematicians before Euclid appeared more correctly in Fabricius’s Bibliotheca Graeca Greek Library and among the elements of Euclid edited by August. Most recently, Friedrich Hultsch added many excerpts from Proclus to the remains of the geometric works of Heron.

Dasypodius seems to have attempted an edition of the entire work, and according to Fabricius, so did Eduardus Bernhardus. Joachim Henricus Knoche, who was excellently instructed in both philosophy and mathematics, was not far from the same undertaking, having devoted most diligent labor to Proclus. He, with remarkable kindness, when he heard that I was preparing an edition of the commentaries of Proclus, shared with me his own handwritten portion of the work, which he himself could not send to me when it was printed in the year 1856. Thus, the task of editing the commentaries of Proclus anew was brought to me, and I would not have been able to undertake the burden left by others had Halmius, with his kindness known to all and his supreme...