Archive - Living Codices

THE ARCHIVE

A growing library of reflective codices and original writings.

Twenty-four texts, drawn from what once burned at Alexandria

Elements

Euclid of Alexandria

The thirteen books that founded geometry — propositions, postulates, the axioms of all that follows.

The Iliad

Homer

The wrath of Achilles, the fall of Hector, the long siege of windy Troy.

The Odyssey

Homer

The man of twists and turns, ten years homeward from a war that lasted ten more.

The Histories

Herodotus of Halicarnassus

An inquiry into the great deeds of Greeks and Persians, that they might not be forgotten.

On the Sphere & Cylinder

Archimedes of Syracuse

Two volumes on volume — the surfaces and contents of figures, derived without modern calculus.

Conics

Apollonius of Perga

Eight books on parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas — names this volume itself bestowed.

Geographica

Eratosthenes of Cyrene

The earth measured at noon by the shadow of a stick — within fifty miles of true.

The Septuagint

The Seventy Translators

Hebrew scripture rendered into Greek by seventy scholars working in seventy cells.

Argonautica

Apollonius of Rhodes

Jason, Medea, and the fleece — the last great epic of the Hellenistic world.

Test

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Pinakes

Callimachus

A catalogue of all who shone in learning, and what they wrote — the first true bibliography.

Theogony

Hesiod

The birth of the gods, from primordial Chaos to the throne of Zeus.

Works and Days

Hesiod

A farmer's almanac woven with myth — the five ages of man and the labour each demands.

Prometheus Bound

Aeschylus

The Titan chained to the rock for the gift of fire, and his prophecy of Zeus's fall.

Oedipus Rex

Sophocles

A king who solves every riddle but the one of his own birth.

The Bacchae

Euripides

The arrival of Dionysus in Thebes, and what is owed to a god who is refused.

Lysistrata

Aristophanes

The women of Greece end a war by means the men had not anticipated.

Phaenomena

Aratus of Soli

A poem of the night sky — constellations, weather signs, and the order of the heavens.

On Floating Bodies

Archimedes of Syracuse

The principle that bears his name — and a king's crown weighed in water.

Mechanica

Hero of Alexandria

Levers, pulleys, screws — and a steam engine eighteen centuries early.

Pneumatica

Hero of Alexandria

Devices powered by air, water, and fire — automata for temples and parlour tricks for kings.

The Republic

Plato

A dialogue on justice that becomes a city, a soul, and an allegory of a cave.

Nicomachean Ethics

Aristotle

Ten books on virtue, the mean between extremes, and the question of the good life.

Catoptrica

Euclid (attributed)

The geometry of mirrors — angles of incidence, reflection, and the burning glass.

Active membership is required to open any of these codices.

Planting Seeds of Remembrance