Th e Elements and uncertainties in Heiberg’s edition 71
Greek antiquity, when there existed neither printing press nor any form
of copyright, edition signifi ed ‘the introduction of a text into circulation
among a circle of readers larger than the school, friends and students of
the author’ – in other words, a ‘publication’ in the minimal sense of having
been ‘rendered public’ and of having been reproduced from a manuscript
revised and corrected by the author (or a collaborator). 6 Th e books of the
Hellenistic era (third to fi rst century before our era) were written in majus-
cule and, in theory, on only one side of papyrus scrolls of a modest and
relatively standardized size. Th us, they were rather limited in contents. 7 I n
the case of the Elements , this tradition implies a likely division into fi ft een
rolls, each containing one book, with the exception of the lengthy Book x. 8
Of course, like practically any other text from Greek antiquity, the ‘origi-
nal’ (which was not necessarily an autograph copy) 9 has not come down to us.
Th e rather limited lifespan of such papyrus scrolls required that they be
periodically recopied, with each copy capable of introducing new faults
and, even more importantly, alterations. Certainly chance played a role in
the preservation of particular papyri, but, in the long run, because of the
fragility of the writing material, a text could come to us only if certain com-
munities found enough interest in it to reproduce it frequently.
In the course of these recopyings, two particularly important technical
operations occurred in the history of the ancient Greek book:
- the change from papyrus scrolls ( volumina ) fi rst to papyrus codices but
later to parchment codices, and - the Byzantine transliteration.
(^6) Th e most famous case is that of the edition of the works of Plotinus by Porphyry.
allows the possibility of variations by the author from the beginning of the textual tradition.
Nonetheless, there is no evidence of this process for the Elements.
- Euclid had not gone to the trouble of producing an ἔκδοσις in the technical sense of the term.
His writings had been circulated in his ‘school’ (in a form that we evidently do not know),
and the edition was made some time later, such as at the beginning of the Roman era in the
circle of Heron of Alexandria. Th is scenario is traced in the history of the body of ‘scholarly’
works of Aristotle, offi cially edited only aft er the fi rst century before our era, by Andronicos
of Rhodes, among others.
In order to be able to dismiss such a (completely speculative) hypothesis, fully detailed
testaments about the role of the Elements in the course of the three centuries before our era
must be in evidence, and this is not the case. On the contrary, we are nearly certain that Heron
had made an important contribution to the Elements – in particular from a textual point of
view – but the epoch in which he lived (traditionally, aft er the work of Neugebauer, the second
half of the fi rst century is named) is not free from dispute. Th is second hypothesis has been
suggested to me by A. Jones. I thank him for it.
(^7) See Reynolds and Wilson 1988: 2–3.
(^8) Dorandi 1986.
(^9) See Dorandi 2000: 51–75.