inciple. He is wronged by being coupled with Joseph Scaliger, as the two
great instances of men of letters who have come into geometry to help the
mathematicians out of their difficulty. I have never seen Scaliger's
quadrature,[201] except in the answers of Adrianus Romanus,[202] Vieta and
Clavius, and in the extracts of Kastner.[203] Scaliger had no right to such
strong opponents: Erasmus or Bentley might just as well have tried the
problem, and either would have done much better in any twenty minutes of
his life.[204]

AN ESTIMATE OF SCALIGER.

Scaliger inspired some mathematicians with great respect for his
geometrical knowledge. Vieta, the first man of his time, who answered him,
had such regard for his opponent {111} as made him conceal Scaliger's name.
Not that he is very respectful in his manner of proceeding: the following
dry quiz on his opponent's logic must have been very cutting, being true.
"In grammaticis, dare navibus Austros, et dare naves Austris, sunt aeque
significantia. Sed in Geometricis, aliud est adsumpsisse circulum BCD non
esse majorem triginta sex segmentis BCDF, aliud circulo BCD non esse majora
triginta sex segmenta BCDF. Illa adsumptiuncula vera est, haec falsa."[205]
Isaac Casaubon,[206] in one of his letters to De Thou,[207] relates that,
he and another paying a visit to Vieta, the conversation fell upon
Scaliger, of whom the host said that he believed Scaliger was the only man
who perfectly understood mathematical writers, especially the Greek ones:
and that he thought more of Scaliger when wrong than of many others when
right; "pluris se Scaligerum vel errantem facere quam multos [Greek:
katorthountas]."[208] This must have been before Scaliger's quadrature
(1594). There is an old story of some one saying, "Mallem cum Scaligero
errare, quam cum Clavio recte sapere."[209] This I cannot help suspecting
to have been a version of Vieta's speech with Clavius satirically inserted,
on account of the great hostility which Vieta showed towards Clavius in the
latter years of his life.

Montucla could not have read with care either Scaliger's quadrature or
Clavius's refutation. He gives the first a wrong date: he assures the world
that there is no question about Scaliger's quadrature being wrong, in the
eyes of geometers at least: and he states that Clavius mortified him {112}
extremely by showing that it made the circle less than its inscribed
dodecagon, which is, of course, equivalent to ass