Ancient and Mediaeval Science 21 



Ephodion finally reach us in 1906 after two millennia of hiding? Its 

 survival is almost miraculous, and yet it is not as rare an event as one 

 might think. Though a large part of the Greek scientific literature is 

 lost, what remains constitutes an imposing treasure. How did all those 

 books, none of them popular in any degree, none of them ever "pub- 

 lished" ^^ in large editions, survive? The only explanation I can think of 

 is this. Though very few people could be directly interested in Archi- 

 medes' treatises (to return to the example which was our starting point), 

 a great many men, whether educated or not, were concerned with them. 

 These men — and maybe women also — realized that such MSS were 

 precious and deserved every care. They had a kind of superstitious 

 respect for every kind of writing^^ and for such esoteric writing in par- 

 ticular. We should not deride the superstitions of those ignorant people, 

 in the first place because we are benefiting from them, in the second 

 place because similar superstitions are abroad among ourselves to this 

 day. It is a very strange compensation indeed; in proportion as religious 

 superstitions decrease, the superstitions of science (or pseudo-science) 

 seem to increase; advertisers, who trade on men's gullibility, know that 

 well enough.^'* Are men unable to live without superstitions? At any 

 rate, the Greek MSS, even the least comprehensible, those of which the 

 average person could make no use whatsoever, were jealously kept and 

 transmitted from generation to generation, from owner to robber or 

 looter, from looter to new owner, and so on. From time to time they 

 fell into the hands of people who were suflBciently appreciative and 

 enthusiastic to prepare new copies or new editions, or commentaries, 

 translations, commentaries on those translations, amplifications, ab- 

 breviations, paraphases, supercommentaries, etc. The Archimedian 

 MSS which have finally reached us have not escaped one catastrophe, 

 but many. 



Indeed, the risks have been so numerous that the second question 

 comes naturally enough to our minds. How can we be sure that the 

 treatise on floating bodies which we may read to-day either in the Greek 

 edition of Heiberg or in the English version of Sir Thomas Heath, is 

 really the text of Archimedes? In this particular case our doubts are 

 excited by a remark of Eutocios to the effect that Archimedes wrote in 

 the Doric dialect, of which but few traces remain in the Greek text avail- 

 able to-day.^^ Eutocios (who flourished nine centuries after Archi- 



" We can speak of the "publication" of books before the age of printing, and 

 even before the age of writing. It occurs when a finished text is made available for 

 reading or recitation and is thus transmitted to the public, "published." Solomon 

 Gandz: The dawn of literature (Osiris 7, 261-522, 1939). 



" That kind of superstition can still be observed ( or could be observed not very 

 long ago) among many Oriental peoples, such as Chinese and Muslims. 



" They use such words as "vitamins," "radioactivity," or other scientific terms 

 as bait to sell their merchandise. 



^^ The Doric characteristics were already beginning to disappear from the 

 Archimedian writings in the time of Eutocios (VI-1). J. L. Heiberg: Uber den 

 Dialekt des Archimedes, Interpolationen in den Schriften des Archimedes 

 (Jahrbiicher fur classische Philologie, Suppt. 13, 543-577, 1884); De dialecto Archi- 



