Archimedes’ <Book> to Eratosthenes in the Palimpsest and Archimedes in Heron’s Metrikon

Abstract

It is argued that even with some new readings made by the publication of the Letter to Eratosthenes in the Archimedes Palimpsest , with the wonderful discovery of his so-called “mechanical method” ( a certain way of theorizing in mathematical things by means of mechanical entities ) at the beginning of the twentieth century, some important historical-philological and philosophicalepistemological issues still remain, which have already discussed in part in my writings. We produce some important testimonies taken from Metrikon by Heron of Alexandria in favour of our translations and interpretations of Archimedes’ lexicon, not without placing under investigation at the same time the personality and the importance of Hero in the history of philosophical, scientific and technological Greek-Hellenistic thought in line with Archimedes and the tradition of Italic thought of science (The quotations of the Greek texts of Archimedes, Heron and Pappus are my translations).