Diophantos and the Arithmetika

Abstract

Editing a classical text usually requires finding manuscripts and determining the variants and their interrelations. The aim of the editor is to approximate as closely as possible to the “original” through the comparison of existing manuscripts and papyrus fragments¹. This is referred to as the direct tradition. In the case of Diophantos, this has been admirably done by André Allard in a hard-to-find edition². Diophantos, as we intend to demonstrate, is an elusive figure about whom we now little more than that he probably lived in the third century. Just one complete work is definitely attributable to him. Another has been preserved only partially, and three further attributions are speculative. Clearly Diophantos, like Euclid, was a compiler, yet none of his sources are known. For some ancient writers, we possess more or less contemporary sources, that is to say papyri or ostraca from the Graeco-Roman period in Egypt, which can usually be dated to within about fifty years. One such group is closely associated with Euclid’s Elements ³. Another deals with commercial arithmetic or stereometry⁴. None, though, is in any way associated with Diophantos.