IV

PREFACE.

He made this translation public. While it was being printed, he saw two other Greek exemplars—one in Venice in the library of Saints John and Paul, and the other in Padua from the library of the Genoese Jo. Vincentius Pinellus—and he made use of them to finish the work. He proclaims, with good reason, that the most useful and lucid volume of Proclus Diadochus, having been rescued from near-certain destruction, had emerged like a renewed phoenix. Everyone who has approached these commentaries of Proclus has used his most excellent work, since even if they did not find the words themselves, they found the opinions and facts, though more obscured than revealed by the Greek exemplar. It will suffice to bring forward the testimony of one Englishman on this matter. For Taylor, in the preface to his own English translation, professes that the difficulties of his undertaking could only be overcome by the book of Barocius, nor does he follow any other guide than Barocius in doubtful passages.

It could not be, however, but that the Greek words were also desired. That chapter in particular, concerning Euclid and the famous mathematicians before Euclid, appeared more accurately in Fabricius’s Bibliotheca Graeca Greek Library and among the elements of Euclid edited by August. More recently, Friedrich Hultsch has added several excerpts from Proclus to the remains of Heron’s geometric works.

Dasypodius seems to have intended an edition of the entire work, and according to Fabricius, so did Edward Bernard. Joachim Heinrich Knoche, who was excellently prepared in the studies of both philosophy and mathematics, was not far from the same undertaking, having applied the most diligent effort to Proclus. With remarkable kindness, when he heard I was preparing an edition of Proclus’s commentaries, he shared with me the portion of his labor which he himself could not send to be printed in the year 1856, written in his own hand. Thus, the care of editing Proclus’s commentaries anew was brought to me, and I could not have undertaken the burden left by others unless Halm, with his kindness known to all and his supreme knowledge of all literature, had sent the excellent Munich manuscript to me.