The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Part 129

Roger Bacon, done in print. [Footnote: The earliest printed edition known to Brunet of the works of Roger Bacon, is a French translation, which appeared about fourty years after Leonardo's death.]

1485.

Cleomedes the philosopher.

[Footnote: Cleomede. A Greek mathematician of the IVth century B. C. We have a Cyclic theory of Meteorica by him. His works were not published before Leonardo's death.]

1486.

CORNELIUS CELSUS.

The highest good is wisdom, the chief evil is suffering in the body. Because, as we are composed of two things, that is soul and body, of which the first is the better, the body is the inferior; wisdom belongs to the better part, and the chief evil belongs to the worse part and is the worst of all. As the best thing of all in the soul is wisdom, so the worst in the body is suffering. Therefore just as bodily pain is the chief evil, wisdom is the chief good of the soul, that is with the wise man; and nothing else can be compared with it.

[Footnote: Aulus Cornelius Celsus, a Roman physician, known as the Roman Hippocrates, probably contemporary with Augustus. Only his eight Books 'De Medicina', are preserved. The earliest editions are: Cornelius Celsus, de medicina libr. VIII., Milan 1481 Venice 1493 and 1497.]

1487.

Demetrius was wont to say that there was no difference between the speech and words of the foolish and ignorant, and the noises and rumblings of the wind in an inflated stomach. Nor did he say so without reason, for he saw no difference between the parts whence the noise issued; whether their lower parts or their mouth, since one and the other were of equal use and importance.

[Footnote: Compare Vol. I, No. 10.]

1488.

Maestro Stefano Caponi, a physician, lives at the piscina, and has Euclid De Ponderibus.

1489.

5th Book of Euclid. First definition: a part is a quant.i.ty of less magnitude than the greater magnitude when the less is contained a certain number of times in the greater.

A part properly speaking is that which may be multiplied, that is when, being multiplied by a certain number, it forms exactly the whole. A common aggregate part ...

Second definition. A greater magnitude is said to be a multiple of a less, when the greater is measured by the less.

By the first we define the lesser [magnitude] and by the second the greater is defined. A part is spoken

1490.

of in relation to the whole; and all their relations lie between these two extremes, and are called multiples.

1491.

Hippocrates says that the origin of men's sperm derives from the brain, and from the lungs and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es of our parents, where the final decocture is made, and all the other limbs transmit their substance to this sperm by means of expiration, because there are no channels through which they might come to the sperm.

[Footnote: The works of Hippocrates were printed first after Leonardo's death.]

1492.

Lucretius in his third [book] 'De Rerum Natura'. The hands, nails and teeth were (165) the weapons of ancient man.

They also use for a standard a bunch of gra.s.s tied to a pole (167).

[Footnote: Lucretius, de rerum natura libri VI were printed first about 1473, at Verona in 1486, at Brescia in 1495, at Venice in 1500 and in 1515, and at Florence in 1515. The numbers 165 and 167 noted by Leonardo at the end of the two pa.s.sages seem to indicate pages, but if so, none of the editions just mentioned can here be meant, nor do these numbers refer to the verses in the poems of Lucretius.]

1493.

Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus a.s.serts that seven hundred thousand volumes of books were burnt in the siege of Alexandria in the time of Julius Cesar.

[Footnote: Ammiani Marcellini historiarum libri qui extant XIII, published at Rome in 1474.]

1494.

Mondino says that the muscles which raise the toes are in the outward side of the thigh, and he adds that there are no muscles in the back [upper side] of the feet, because nature desired to make them light, so as to move with ease; and if they had been fleshy they would be heavier; and here experience shows ...

[Footnote: "Mundini anatomia. Mundinus, Anothomia (sic). Mundini praestantissimorum doctorum almi studii ticiensis (sic) cura diligentissime emendata. Impressa Papiae per magistrum Antonium de Carfano 1478," in-fol.; ristampata: "Bononiae Johan. de Noerdlingen, 1482," in-fol.; "Padova per Mattheum Cerdonis de Vuindischgretz, 1484," in-40; "Lipsia, 1493," in-40; "Venezia, 1494," in-40 e ivi "1498," con fig. Queste figure per altro non sono, come si e preteso, le prime che fossero introdotte in un trattato di Notamia. Nel 'fasciculus Medicinae' di Giovanni Ketham, che riproduce l"Anatomia' del Mundinus, impresso pure a Venezia da J. e G. de Gregoriis, 1491, in-fol., contengonsi intagli in legno (si vogliono disegnati non gia incisi da Andrea Mantegna) di grande dimensione, e che furono piu volte riprodotti negli anni successivi. Quest' edizione del "fasciculus" del 1491, sta fra nostri libri e potrebbe benissimo essere il volume d'Anatomia notato da Leonardo. (G. D'A.)]

1495.

Of the error of those who practice without knowledge;-[3] See first the 'Ars poetica' of Horace [5].

[Footnote: A 3-5 are written on the margin at the side of the t.i.tle line of the text given, entire as No. 19]

1496.

The heirs of Maestro Giovanni Ghiringallo have the works of Pelacano.

1497.

The catapult, as we are told by Nonius and Pliny, is a machine devised by those &c.

[Footnote: Plinius, see No. 946.]

1498.

I have found in a history of the Spaniards that in their wars with the English Archimedes of Syracuse who at that time was living at the court of Ecliderides, King of the Cirodastri. And in maritime warfare he ordered that the s.h.i.+ps should have tall masts, and that on their tops there should be a spar fixed [Footnote 6: Compare No. 1115.] of 40 feet long and one third of a foot thick. At one end of this was a small grappling iron and at the other a counterpoise; and there was also attached 12 feet of chain; and, at the end of this chain, as much rope as would reach from the chain to the base of the top, where it was fixed with a small rope; from this base it ran down to the bottom of the mast where a very strong spar was attached and to this was fastened the end of the rope. But to go on to the use of his machine; I say that below this grappling iron was a fire [Footnote 14: Compare No. 1128.] which, with tremendous noise, threw down its rays and a shower of burning pitch; which, pouring down on the [enemy's] top, compelled the men who were in it to abandon the top to which the grappling-iron had clung. This was hooked on to the edges of the top and then suddenly the cord attached at the base of the top to support the cord which went from the grappling iron, was cut, giving way and drawing in the enemy's s.h.i.+p; and if the anchor-was cast ...

[Footnote: Archimedes never visited Spain, and the names here mentioned cannot be explained. Leonardo seems to quote here from a book, perhaps by some questionable mediaeval writer. Prof. C. Justi writes to me from Madrid, that Spanish savants have no knowledge of the sources from which this story may have been derived.]

1499.

Theophrastus on the ebb and flow of the tide, and of eddies, and on water. [Footnote: The Greek philosophers had no opportunity to study the phenomenon of the ebb and flow of the tide and none of them wrote about it. The movement of the waters in the Euripus however was to a few of them a puzzling problem.]

1500.

Tryphon of Alexandria, who spent his life at Apollonia, a city of Albania (163). [Footnote: Tryphon of Alexandria, a Greek Grammarian of the time of Augustus. His treatise TtaOY Aeijecu appeared first at Milan in 1476, in Constantin Laskaris's Greek Grammar.]

1501.

Messer Vincenzio Aliprando, who lives near the Inn of the Bear, has Giacomo Andrea's Vitruvius.

1502.

Vitruvius says that small models are of no avail for ascertaining the effects of large ones; and I here propose to prove that this conclusion is a false one. And chiefly by bringing forward the very same argument which led him to this conclusion; that is, by an experiment with an auger. For he proves that if a man, by a certain exertion of strength, makes a hole of a given diameter, and afterwards another hole of double the diameter, this cannot be made with only double the exertion of the man's strength, but needs much more. To this it may very well be answered that an auger