The Complete Works of Archimedes, Vol. 2

Let us begin by describing the Florentine codex.

The Florentine codex of the Laurentian Medicean Library, Plut. XXVIII, 4, is parchment, written on thick membranes without any trace of lines, and it is very well preserved. It consists of 179 leaves of the largest size, which a recent hand has numbered somewhat negligently; by the first hand, on the lower right part of the back page of every tenth leaf, the numbers of the gatherings and the first words of the following page have been inscribed. The codex is written quite clearly, although not most beautifully, with many abbreviations; accents and breathings are frequently omitted; where they are present, they provide a square form ⊢ or ⌞, very rarely curved as we now use; here and there both a breathing and an accent are placed on the same syllable, but never connected in one stroke. The first page is written with paler ink with all accents, the title and the initial A are red. This codex contains the following:

On the Sphere and Cylinder I—II, On the Measurement of a Circle, On Conoids and Spheroids, On Spirals, On Plane Equilibria, The Sand Reckoner, The Quadrature of the Parabola, the commentaries of Eutocius on the two books of On the Sphere and Cylinder, on the booklet On the Measurement of a Circle, on the two books of On Plane Equilibria, and excerpts from Hero on measurements. At the end of the books, the title is always repeated; furthermore, at the end of the book On the Quadrature of the Parabola, it has:

and at the end of Eutocius’s commentaries on the books of On the Sphere and Cylinder:

The mathematical figures were always drawn by the same hand as the rest of the codex; in this work, the scribe used a ruler and compass, but lacked instruments with which to draw conic sections and spirals; for this reason, he described the former almost as if they were arcs of circles, and the latter he outlined very poorly and carelessly without any help. At the end of the codex, neither the word τέλος nor any other sign showing that the codex is finished has been added; the last leaf is blank and served as a cover. Cf. Bandinii catalogus II p. 14.