164 reviel netz
Mugler’s Budé’s text ( 1970 –2) goes further: it not merely translates the text
of the second edition of Archimedes, but also provides a facing Greek text –
which directly reproduces the original edition by Heiberg! Mugler’s decision
to avoid any attempt to revise Heiberg may well have been due to another
curious twist of fate: by the 1970s, the Palimpsest had gone missing so that
a new edition appeared impossible. Stamatis’ version ( 1970 –4) repeats the
same procedure, with modern Greek instead of French.
An edition is ontologically distinct from its sources. It is a synthesis of
various manuscripts into a single printed text. Th e editor, aiming to pre-
serve a past legacy, inevitably transforms it. It is a truism that Heiberg’s
version of Archimedes is not the same as the manuscript tradition – let
alone the same as Archimedes’ original ‘publication’ (whatever this term
may mean). Once again: the point is not to criticize Heiberg. Th e point is to
try to understand the distinguishing features of his edition, which may even
form part of the image of Archimedes in the twenty-fi rst century. In this
chapter I survey a number of transformations introduced by Heiberg into
his text. Th ese fall into three parts, very diff erent in character. First, Heiberg
ignored the manuscript evidence for the diagrams, producing instead his
own diagrams (this, indeed, may be the only point for which his philology
may be faulted; I return to discuss Heiberg’s possible justifi cations below).
Second, at the local textual level, Heiberg marked passages he considered to
be late glosses and thus not coming from the pen of Archimedes. Th ird, at
the global textual level, through various choices of modern format as well
as textual extrapolation, Heiberg introduced a certain homogeneity of pres-
entation to the Archimedean text. Th e net result of all those transforma-
tions was to produce an Archimedes who was textually explicit, consistent,
rigorous and yet opaque. I move on to show this in detail.Th e texture of Archimedes’ diagrams
Th is is not the place to discuss the complex philological question of the
origins of the diagrams as extant in our manuscripts. I sum up, instead,
the main facts. Of the three known early Byzantine manuscripts, one – the
Palimpsest or codex C – is extant. Th e two others are represented by copies: a
plethora of independent copies of codex A, allowing a very confi dent recon-
struction of the original; and Moerbeke’s Latin translation based in part on
codex B (and in part based also on codex A). For most works we can recon-
struct two early Byzantine traditions (codices A and C for SC i , SC ii , SL,
DC; codices A and B for PE i ; codices B and C for FB i , FB ii. For PE ii alone