82 JEROME CARDAN 



(Tartaglia) for solution because he could not arrive at 

 the meaning of them himself. He waved aside Juan 

 Antonio's perfectly irrelevant and fatuous protests that 

 Cardan would not in any case have sent these questions 

 if they had been framed by another person, or if he had 

 been unable to solve them. Tartaglia, on the other hand, 

 declared that Cardan certainly did not comprehend 

 them. If he did not know the rule by which Fiore's 

 questions had been answered (that of the cosa and the 

 cubus equal to the numerus), how could he solve these 

 questions which he now sent, seeing that certain of them 

 involved operations much more complicated than that 

 of the rule above written ? If he understood the ques- 

 tions which he now sent for solution, he could not want 

 to be taught this rule. Then Juan Antonio moderated 

 his demand still farther, and said he would be satisfied 

 with a copy of the questions which Fiore had put to 

 Tartaglia, adding that the favour would be much 

 greater if Tartaglia's own questions were also given. 

 He probably felt that it would be mere waste of breath 

 to beg again for Tartaglia's answers. The end of the 

 matter was that Tartaglia handed over to the messenger 

 the questions which Fiore had propounded in the 

 Venetian contest, and authorized Juan Antonio to get a 

 copy of his own from the notary who had drawn up the 

 terms of the disputation with Fiore. The date of this 

 communication is January 2, 1539, an d on February 12 

 Cardan writes a long letter to Tartaglia, complaining in 

 somewhat testy spirit of the reception given to his 

 request. He is aggrieved that Tartaglia should have 

 sent him nothing but the questions put to him by Fiore, 

 thirty in number indeed, but only one in substance, and 

 that he should have dared to hint that those which he 

 (Cardan) had sent for solution were not his own, but 



