PREFACE.

Whether it is worthwhile to bring back into the light works that no man has revisited since the year 1533 might rightfully seem doubtful to one who thinks this has depended solely on someone’s whim, rather than on the opportunity being given. Now, the one who first edited Proclus’s commentaries, Simon Grynæus, being aided by only one manuscript—which he says the scholar John Claymund honestly provided to him at Oxford—approached the task quite boldly. For those editions were, to use the words of Barocius, as if they had never been published at all. The same complaint is heard from the books of those who were eager to read in Greek what Proclus had handed down, whether concerning the tenets of philosophy or regarding mathematical or geometric matters, which he himself, both as philosopher and geometer, had set forth in these commentaries.

Barocius came to their aid quite remarkably, clarifying the more difficult points, correcting errors, filling gaps, adding what was missing, and translating everything into Latin. He, if he had wanted to, seems to have been able to restore the Greek Proclus. For he praises it as a result of divine providence that a very ancient exemplar fell into his hands on the island of Crete; from that exemplar, which was itself imperfect in many places, he says he corrected the printed version as diligently as he could. Having gone to Bologna, he found two manuscripts, one in the library of S. Salvatore and the other in the library of Fabricius Garzoni, a professor of medicine at the University of Bologna, and from all these exemplars he made one complete text as far as was possible, which he converted from the Greek language into Latin.