Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts : Miscellany of Greek texts

Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This manuscript is a <i>Miscellany of Greek texts</i> on mathematics, geography, astronomy, engineering and theology. It is a composite, made up of five parts copied in the second half of the 17th century by six different hands which were later bound together. One of the texts is the work of the ancient astronomer Aristarchos of Samos on the distances of the sun and moon, which appears both in the original Greek and in Arabic translation.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>The first part contains a selection of short ancient works on astronomy and geography, including the work of Aristarchos in Greek, along with a 14th-century theological treatise on the schism between the chuches of East and West and an account of a 9th-century synod. The second consists of the work of Aristarchos in Arabic, complete with diagrams. The third includes ancient texts on machinery and optics, along with a commentary by the 4th-century CE mathematican and astronomer Theon of Alexandria on the highly influential set of astronomical tables produced by his 2nd-century precursor Ptolemy. The content of the fourth and fifth parts is related to this. The fourth contains Ptolemy's own introduction to the tables, along with two other tables he produced, a chronological one of the reigns of rulers and another of the latitudes and longitudes of cities, extracted from his <i>Geography</i>, while the fifth comprises a second, longer treatise by Theon on the astronomical tables. Those tables themselves, however, do not appear in the manuscript.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Christopher Wright</p>