Michael Fried wrote:
About Heath's translations, his Euclid, on the whole, is very good and
faithful to the Greek text. In his Apollonius and Archimedes, on the
other hand, he took far to many liberties -- to the extent that it is
moot even calling his translations translations.
I agree that Sir Thomas Little Heath's translations on the whole are good
and faithful, BUT they too lel us down when it comes to certain subtleties.
See David Lachterman's ETHICS OF GEOMETRY. I'll give just one example:
In the very first proposition: Heath writes
With centre A and distance AB let the circle BCD be described.
Lachterman: let the circle BCD have been described [gegraphthO].
Lachterman's comment:
The phrases inite us, perhaps, to recollect or imagine someone's
describing the circles; they do not oblige us to imitate these
recollected actions *in status nascendi".
This point would only be of someone who, like David Lachterman, is
interested in the differences in understanding of construction in ancient &
modern maths.
Of course Heath's APOLLONIUS is not a translation it is a
semi-modernization. Heath says in his introduction that the first thing he
did was to make a literal translation. I tried to find that literal
translation in 1971. I even telephoned his son, who said that he believes
that his father destroyed it when the work was published. Too bad!
Best wishes,
Sam Kutler