Ancient variant, emendation or error? Some notes on Eratosthenes’ epigram on the De duplicatione cubi, line 2, and the apographs of a lost manuscript belonging to Giorgio Valla

By the end of the fifteenth century, Giorgio Valla was able to read the now lost ms. A, archetype of the tradition of the works of Archimedes and the commentary written by Eutocius of Ascalon, which preserves the epigram by Eratosthenes on the duplication of the volume of the cube (in Eutocius’ commentary on the treatise On the sphere and the cylinder). The text of the epigram was edited by Powell in 1925 in his Collectanea Alexandrina on the basis of the most important manuscripts (Laur. plut. 28.4, Marc. gr. 305 Par. gr. 2360, and Par. gr. 2361, i.e. D, E, G, H in Mugler’s edition of Archimedes). Thanks to the rediscovery of codex Laur. Redi 15 it is now possible to study the origin of the variant at line 2 (φράζεαι / φράζεται). The date of this manuscript, and the presence of the lectio difficilior in it, lead us to formulate the hypothesis that the variant reading may be an emendation or, more likely, an error.