Il ‘nuovo’ palinsesto di Archimede e qualche figura sbagliata

The editors of Greek mathematical texts have generally neglected the illustrative apparatus in the manuscript tradition. For this reason, among others, scholars have been anticipating the transcription of the Constantinopolitan palimpsest of Archimedes by Reviel Netz and Nigel Wilson, which could also have enabled philologists to study the geometric diagrams preserved in the unlucky codex – lost for many decades and now re-emerging only to be locked up again in the stronghold of an anonymous private collection. On examination, however, the transcription of the diagrams turns out to be unsatisfactory, obscuring the stemmatic relationship between the palimpsest and the other branches of the Archimedean tradition. The transcription of the title of the De sphaera et cylindro is also mistaken.