Archimedes: what survives of his works
Archimedes’ works reached us in copies made many centuries later. Understanding them means keeping the author, the work, and the manuscript apart.
Which Archimedes text survives?
The Works of Archimedes, in the Cambridge edition, presents the mathematical treatises attributed to Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived from about 287 to 212 BCE. The research record stores that lifespan as the authorial context, not as the date of any individual work. Cambridge University Press ↗
Composition and witness
The record notes that the manuscript history of the corpus is much later than the compositions, and that the famous palimpsest belongs to witness and reception history, not to the original composition date. Each treatise will need its own record.
Three dates for one author
Do not equate an author's lifespan with a text's date, and do not equate a manuscript's date with either. Three dates, three kinds of evidence.
What can an overwritten page restore?
When a lost treatise is recovered from a reused parchment, what exactly has been recovered: the author's words, a copyist's version, or a later editor's arrangement?