APOLLONIUS PERGAEUS

CONICORUM LIBRI QUATTUOR Una cum pappi Alexandrini Lemmatibus, et Commentariis Eutocii AscalonitaeSERENUS OF ANZI Libri Duo. Unus de Secrione Cylindri, alter de Sectione Conti.

      Bologna: Alessandro Benacci, 1566 First Commandino edition. Folio (215mm x 315mm), two parts in one volume as issued. Contemporary vellum lettered in manuscript to the spine. Illustrated with woodcut diagrams throughout the text and woodcut initials. Minor repairs to the head of the spine. Contents sometime recased. Internally well margined, with some spotting and occasional early marginalia, but a generally clean and fresh copy. The most important text on conic sections, influencing many later scholars including Ptolemy, Newton, and Descartes.“The invention of conic sections is attributed to Menaechmus (4th cent. BC), a member of Plato’s Academy at Athens. Various species of conic sections were obtained by truncating an acute-angled, right-angled and obtuse-angled cone by a plane perpendicular to the generator of the cone.... The greatest ancient writer on conic sections was Apollonius of Perga (c.262-c.190 BC). His famous work Conics consisted of eight books and contained 487 propositions. Apollonius introduced the terms ellipse, parabola and hyperbola and showed that various sections of the cone can be obtained by varying the inclination of the intersecting plane...The Latin translation of the first four books of Apollonius by Gianbattista Memo appeared in Venice in 1537. The most notable printed edition of Apollonius’ Conics in the sixteenth century is based on the translation by Federico Commandino (1506-1575), who played the key role in the project of editing, translating and publishing classical Greek mathematical texts under the auspices of the Duke of Urbino.” (Koudela - Curves in the History of Mathematics: The Late Renaissance (2005))