The Works of Euclid, Vol. 1

works. Wherefore, I collated manuscript 190 with the Oxford edition, and I inscribed the variant readings in the margin of the printed work.

Once these things were completed, I attended diligently to the variant readings placed in the margin, and, having summoned other manuscripts, I admitted this or that variant reading into the Parisian edition, or rejected it from it. I held manuscript 190 to be the superior whenever I had no reason why I should prefer one reading over another.

I translated the Greek text thus established into Latin, and whatever was opportune to be changed from the variant readings I had admitted, these were changed in the French version.

My Latin version corresponds word-for-word to the Greek text, unless some particular circumstance compelled me to do otherwise. Perhaps some Hellenisms will occur in my version, or at least certain locutions from which the Latin language seems to recoil. I could indeed have avoided them; but my version would have been less consistent with the Greek text.

Regarding my method of translation, I consulted men most versed in the Greek and Latin languages. M. Delambre, perpetual secretary of the class of physical and mathematical sciences of the Imperial Institute of France, and also treasurer of the Imperial University, deigned to weigh my version and to give me useful advice. He wrote the following letter to me on this matter:

We have read with pleasure the first six sheets of your trilingual Euclid. Your commissioners had expressed the desire to see an edition of the Greek text of Euclid purged of all the errors that you have corrected with the help of manuscripts, and enriched with all the additions that the manuscripts have provided to you: you will soon satisfy the desire of them all and of all learned men.

I greatly approve that you have determined to render a Latin version as consistent as both languages can bear. The Greeks had two ways of indicating the oblique cases, namely, the termination and the article; when one of these two methods was lacking to them, which often happens in geometry, the article was sufficient to remove all doubt.