Transmission and The Manuscript Tradition
Although the earliest Greek language texts on mathematics that have been found were written after the Hellenistic period, many of these are considered to be copies of works written during and before the Hellenistic period. The two major sources are
- Byzantine codices written some 500 to 1500 years after their originals
- Syriac or Arabic translations of Greek works and Latin translations of the Arabic versions.
Nevertheless, despite the lack of original manuscripts, the dates of Greek mathematics are more certain than the dates of surviving Baylonian or Egyptian sources because a large number of overlapping chronologies exist. Even so, many dates are uncertain; but the doubt is a matter of decades rather than centuries.
Read more about this topic: Ancient Greek Mathematicians
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