PROLEGOMENA.

I.

I have dedicated the first volume of this edition to mathematicians for whom the Diophantine problems and methods will seem still not to be neglected even now. In this second volume, they will find nothing of the sort; nothing, I say (except for the final overview of questions on pages 287 and following), that can serve their specific studies. I dedicate this material, gathered here from various sources original Latin: "variis e silvis," literally "from various forests," a literary term for a collection of raw or miscellaneous materials and mostly unpublished, to philologists scholars who study historical linguistic and literary sources and especially to those few who wish to examine new Greek documents for the history of mathematics. Therefore, there was no reason why I should wish to provide a Latin translation here, as I did in the previous volume; but perhaps I must provide longer introductory remarks now for that reason.

First, I will speak separately about the collected pseudepigrapha pseudepigrapha: works falsely attributed to an author, in this case, to Diophantus.

1. Fragment I, indicated in the catalog of the Paris Greek Supplement, is contained in manuscript Supplement 387. This manuscript was written around the year 1303 and was used by the most illustrious Hultsch Friedrich Hultsch (1833–1906) was a German scholar who edited the works of ancient mathematicians (under the notation C) in editing the Remaining Geometric and Stereometric Works of Hero of Alexandria. The preceding leaves are filled by a small work titled: The Beginning of the Great and Indian Calculation original Greek: ’Αρχὴ τῆς μεγάλης καὶ Ἰνδικῆς ψηφιφορίας (sic), composed in the year 1252 and, after almost half a century, by Maximus This refers to Maximus Planudes, a Byzantine scholar who wrote a commentary on Diophantus and a work on Indian numerals