ABSTRACT
W h e t h e r this treatise was written by Aristotle himself, or by Theophrastus, or by someone else, it was no doubt written in the School. Aristotle has an observation in the Physics:1 ‘For it is not a hard task to destroy the (theory of) indivisible lines'; and he may have suggested to some pupil that he should write up the subject. The arguments in the treatise are more in the nature of chopping logic than of a serious contribution to mathematics; and they tell us little that the historian of mathematics does not find in other sources. There is little to add in the way of commentary to the very full notes added by Joachim to his translation. There are a number of citations of definitions and propositions in a form differing little from that given to them by Euclid. The terminology is largely the same as that fixed by Euclid in his Elements: but we find (as in the Mechanics and Problems), alongside of Euclid's, survivals of somewhat antiquated and less consistent terminology from Aris totle's time or earlier.
