80 JEROME CARDAN 



to this time Tartaglia had never announced that he 

 had any intention of publishing his discoveries as part 

 of a separate work on Mathematics. There was indeed 

 a good reason why he should refrain from doing this in 

 the fact that he could only speak and write Italian, and 

 that in the Brescian dialect, being entirely ignorant of 

 Latin, the only tongue which the writer of a mathe- 

 matical work could use with any hope of success. 

 Tartaglia's record of his conversation with Messer Juan 

 Antonio, the emissary employed by Cardan, and of all 

 the subsequent details of the controversy, is preserved 

 in his principal work, Quesiti et Inventioni Diverse de 

 Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano} a record which furnishes 

 abundant and striking instance of his jealous and 

 suspicious temper. Much of it is given in the form of 

 dialogue, the terms of which are perhaps a little too 

 precise to carry conviction of its entire sincerity and 

 spontaneity. It was probably written just after the 

 final cause of quarrel in 1545, and its main object seems 

 to be to set the author right in the sight of the world, 

 and to exhibit Cardan as a meddlesome fellow not to 

 be trusted, and one ignorant of the very elements of the 

 art he professed to teach. 2 



The inquiry begins with a courteously worded request 

 from Messer Juan Antonio (speaking on behalf of Messer 

 Hieronimo Cardano), that Messer Niccolo would make 

 known to his principal the rule by means of which he 

 had made such short work of Antonio Fiore's thirty 

 questions. It had been told to Messer Hieronimo that 

 Fiore's thirty questions had led up to a case of the cosa 



1 This work is the chief authority for the facts which follow. 

 The edition referred to is that of Venice, 1546. There is also a 

 full account of the same in Cossali, Origine delF Algebra (Parma, 

 1799), vol. ii. p. 96. 



2 Quesiti et Invention! , p. 115. 



