Roger Pearse

Absolutely. Which is pretty good, really!

If you fancy doing a bit of off-line research, and finding out a list of the Greek mss, it would be most interesting to see it. (A critical edition of the Greek text will have a table of mss at the front).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Casper

I'll get at least partially there. I am forcing myself to follow through on some things more now rather than just accept this or that idea. More of an exercise in researching than actual research. I guess I've grown some intellectually.

I think there were some references on that page.

Roger Pearse

Well done! It's impossible to follow up everything, which is why we all specialise. But it's the only way.

If you want some help making sense of the references, do ask (we can take this offline if you like, but there seems no need).

I'd love to see a list of the Greek mss of Euclid. It won't be complete -- even libraries do not know what mss they hold! -- but anything would be nice.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Just out of interest, I have today uploaded details of the manuscripts of Gelasius of Cyzicus (ca. 475 AD). They are here. Earliest manuscript 13th century.

mountainman

The comparison is strikingly vivid: Constantine published the NT and burnt Euclid. His regime continued the tradition. The output of the academic author Porphyry included Euclid. Constantine ordered the writings of Porphyry (and also that Porphyrian Arius) to be burnt c.325 CE, just after his military supremacist summit meeting at Nicaea, and that anyone apprehended concealing these writings, to be beheaded.

The Boss did not have a fond liking of poets and philosophers. Robin Lane-Fox's long discussion of Constantine's Oration to the Saints, at Antioch c.324 CE, makes this crystal clear.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Roger Pearse

I'm sure that everyone knows that posts by Mountainman are anti-factual in pretty much every detail; just to reiterate that the same applies to his post in this thread.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

WIKI:

Porphyry of Tyre (Greek: �*ορφύριος, c. A.D. 233–c. 309) was a Syrian[1] Neoplatonic philosopher. He is important in the history of mathematics because of his Life of Pythagoras and his commentary on Euclid's Elements, used by Pappus when he wrote his own commentary.[2]

Porphyry's Isagoge, or "Introduction" to Aristotle's "Categories", in Latin translation, was the standard textbook on logic for at least a millennium after his death (Barnes 2003).

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Toto

Mountainman - it is stated that Constantine burned all the copies he could find of Porphyry's work against Christianity in 435. It does not appear that Constantine burned his work on geometry, or that Constantine burned Euclid's work.

mountainman

Socrates Scholasticus preserves a letter of Constantine apparently issued immediately after Nicaea c.325 CE in which no distinction is made concerning which writings of Porphyry were to be burned. Constantine discloses the following:

(1) Porphyry "found the reward which befitted him"
(2) The writings of Porphyry were "righteously destroyed"
(3) "The writings of Arius .. shall be delivered to be burned with fire"
(4) "The penalty for secreting Arius' writings shall be death"
(5) "The capital punishment [is to be] by beheading without delay"

Here is a translation:
Best wishes,



Pete brown

Casper

I have a split! Woohoo! Uhhh, now what do I do?

I guess I will use Pete's "Euclid as a heretic" argument as a soundboard and go from there, and maybe touch on where I have been going with this (I generally bill 80-100 hours a week at work so I'm not exactly burning rubber here).

So far one thing I have found has become apparent; the writer Proclus Diadochus, 410-485 CE, wrote what seems to have been a very popular review of Euclid's work, and this is one reason for Euclid's work surviving, not its demise.

Proclus was a Neo-platonic, and while I am not qualified to comment on what he may have seen beyond geometric relationships, it is fairly apparent that he saw in Euclid a basis of his brand of philosophy over and above the more mundane use as academic texts, the association between philosophy and science at the time noted.

This is one of the easier-on-the-eyes links to Proclus' commentary, chapters 1 & 2. I am not outright endorsing it, but it serves my current purpose well enough:

Proclus from the prometheus Trust (link)

I don't know how well the translation is done, but it seems fairly clear and straightforward to me (an anglophone), and it is very philosophical in nature. Actually, it reads pretty good at my level. YMMV.

I suppose Pete might argue that this popularity condemned Euclid to Constantine's wrath, but so it would also for Proclus, as well as other commentaries, which are some kind of then-popular way of tacking one's own ideas onto someone elses while insuring literary credit; kind of an early peer-review process, or at least I can see the parallels.

My opinion right now, is that far from being condemned as a subversive document, it became a split for the neo-platonists and other learned philosopher-types who may have been disillusioned with all the theological soup that was floating around. There is nothing gnostic here; the proofs themselves have their own simplicity and rigor written in. No need for superstition in any way, because regardless of the cosmology one follows, these things in Euclid are clear and stand on their own based solely on individual physical perceptions.

I posit that it doesn't present a danger to any theology of the 5th century, only an alternative to those who felt little desire to contemplate such matters and instead were intrigued by the "magic" of numbers. In fact the dry nature of the elements is easier to swallow when it is seen as a metaphor for "the grand scheme of things". Hence the popularity gain at this time.

It looks like more than a crisp benjamin for the work that has the plates and list of fragments, so I set that aside temporarily to explore another aspect; the correction or lack of correction of mathematical error. After all, One could make a name for themselves quite easily by succesfully disputing and correcting a distinguished work so motive is there. No "laws of God" are broken by such a correction, so any new material would not have one burned at the stake for heresy (I don't think so at least). There may be reluctance to point out an error by some if they took it as a basis for some kind of theo-philosophical dogma, but I can't see it because the form is based on proofs, and any philosophy built on the work would by necessity value proofs (in my mind at least). That really leaves only the possibility that any errors not noticed early on and carried forward through the centuries were simply too subtle for most readers. I think I can show an example of this, but not without assuming that the error in logic was always there (a boldish assumption, because a translational or scribe error may contribute to the "wrongness" in some way). And I'm not quite ready to take that step either, I need to get more familiar with the work itself (english version at least).