iv TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION. 



The first printed edition of Euclid, pub- 

 lished in Venice in 1482, was a Latin version 

 from the Arabic. The translation into Latin 

 from the Greek, made by Zaniberti from a 

 MS. of Theon's revision, was first published 

 at Venice in 1505. 



Twenty-eight years later appeared the 

 editio princeps in Greek, published at Basle 

 in 1533 by John Hervagius, edited by Simon 

 Grynaeus. This was for a century and three- 

 quarters the only printed Greek text of all the 

 books, and from it the first English transla- 

 tion (1570) was made by "Henricus Billings- 

 ley," afterward Sir Henry Billingsley, Lord 

 Mayor of London in 1591. 



And even to-day, 1895, in the vast system of 

 examinations carried out by the British Gov- 

 ernment, by Oxford, and by Cambridge, no 

 proof of a theorem in geometry will be ac- 

 cepted which infringes Euclid's sequence of 

 propositions. 



Nor is the work unworthy of this extraor- 

 dinary immortality. 



Says Clifford: "This book has been for 

 nearly twenty-two centuries the encourage- 

 ment and guide of that scientific thought 

 which is one thing with the progress of man 

 from a worse to a better state. 



