I have had one disappointment in preparing this book for the press. I was particularly anxious to place on or opposite the title-page a portrait of Archimedes, and I was encouraged in this idea by the fact that the title-page of Torelli's edition bears a representation in medallion form on which are endorsed the words Archimedis effigies marmorea in veteri anaglypho Romae asservato. Caution was however suggested when I found two more portraits wholly unlike this but still claiming to represent Archimedes, one of them appearing at the beginning of Peyrard's French translation of 1807, and the other in Gronovius' Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum; and I thought it well to inquire further into the matter. I am now informed by Dr A. S. Murray of the British Museum that there does not appear to be any authority for any one of the three, and that writers on iconography apparently do not recognise an Archimedes among existing portraits. I was, therefore, reluctantly obliged to give up my idea.
The proof sheets have, as on the former occasion, been read over by my brother, Dr R. S. Heath, Principal of Mason College, Birmingham; and I desire to take this opportunity of thanking him for undertaking what might well have seemed, to any one less genuinely interested in Greek geometry, a thankless task.
T. L. HEATH.
March, 1897.
