Towards the end of $2021$, I got stuck on a particular calculation and it took me over a month and a half to resolve. Frustratingly, Ptolemy showed no work, Neugebauer made no comment (which generally indicates he found no fault in the calculation), and Pedersen skipped the chapter entirely. It seemed there was little to no help available save a footnote in the Toomer translation I’m using which stated
a somewhat unsatisfactory numerical verification of [the calculation] (using the Handy Tables) is in Pappus’ commentary (Rome[$1$] $232-4$).
The citation here is to a text entitled Commentaires de Pappus et de Theon d’Alexandrie sur l’Almageste(Commentaries of Pappus and Theon of Alexandria) by Adolphe Rome.
Pappus was a $4^{th}$ century astronomer/mathematician so my hope was that the source by Rome that Toomer was citing was a translation. As was obvious from the title, the work was written in French and I’d taken enough French that I hoped I would be able to muddle through a translation and so I requested the text through an interlibrary loan.
Continue reading “Commentaries of Pappus and Theon of Alexandria on the Almagest – A. Rome (1931)”