Euclid in the Renaissance: the reworking of Frencesco Maurolico from an arithmetical viewpoint

Francesco Maurolico (1494-1575) was one of the most interesting restorers of Greek mathematics during the Renaissance. His approach to the restoration of Classics was creative rather than philological, even in the case of Euclid's Elements. Among his extant writings we nd a quite faithful "reading" of some Books of the Elements (V, VII-X) , but the most innovative work is a compendium of the Euclidean text. Maurolico's Elementorum Compendia is not really a reasoned synthesis of the Elements, but rather a reworking infuenced by a deep arithmetical interpretation of the topics, from the theory of proportions to the relationships between regular polyhedra. The compendium of the fteen books of the Elements { grouped on the basis of the autograph instructions left by Maurolico { shows tracts of deep originality, but at the same time it constitutes a very heterogeneous work, raising several questions, both philological and mathematical.