176 reviel netz
part of the logic of the text and for that reason, on the one hand, did not
value them enough to care for their proper edition and, on the other hand,
preferred to produce them as mere ‘illustrations’ – as visual aids revealing
to the mind a picture of the object under discussion. Th e implication – false
for Archimedes as for Greek mathematics more generally – would be that
the text is logically self-enclosed, that all claims are textually explicit. Th is,
then, was the fi rst transformation introduced by Heiberg into the texture of
Archimedes’ reasoning.Th e texture of Archimedes’ text: the local level
An overview of Heiberg’s practice of excision
A characteristic feature of Heiberg’s edition is his use of square brackets
in the sense of text present in the manuscripts, which however is to be
excluded as non-authorial. Th is, incidentally, is not the current practice
among classical philologers, where the ‘{}’ are used for the same purpose,
whereas square brackets are used to signal text restored by the editor – for
which Heiberg himself used the ‘<>’ brackets. 10 Th is practice should be
compared with two other options Heiberg had available to him.
(1) One was to omit excluded text from his printed text altogether, relegat-
ing it into the critical apparatus alone. Such, indeed, is Heiberg’s prac-
tice whenever already any of the manuscripts exclude the passage. For
instance, SL 68.15–16 has the printed text συμπεσειται δε αυτα τα TZ,
‘Th is will meet TZ’, which Heiberg has on the authority of codices BG.
Heiberg’s apparatus has the comment: ‘αυτα] G, τα αυτα A(C), ipsi B’
(G is the siglum used for one of the Renaissance copies of codex A), that
is: the reconstructed manuscript A certainly read ta auta ta (as this is the
text read in all copies save the relatively mathematically sophisticated G),
and so probably (Heiberg was unsure, but he was right) codex C; in codex
B, Moerbeke translated the relevant words as if they were auta ta alone –
though once again, Moerbeke is relatively mathematically sophisticated.
Heiberg could in principle have printed ‘[τα] αυτα τα’, commenting
in the apparatus ‘τα] del. prae. BG’. Th is he did not do: his practice was
to relegate such excluded words to the apparatus alone. On the other
hand, in such cases where there was unanimous textual authority for a
particular passage which Heiberg preferred to omit, his practice was to
print that passage in the main text, surrounded by square brackets.10 See e.g. http://odur.let.rug.nl/~vannijf/epigraphy1.htm.