Chapter 1 Translating Euclid ’ s Diagrams into English , 1551 – 1571

The years 1551–1571 saw the first published translations of Euclid’s Elements in the English language. Euclid’s first English translators had to translate not just his words, but his entire system of geometry for a vernacular public unversed in a method and study hitherto ‘locked up in straunge tongues.’ Throughout its written and printed history, diagrams have been crucial features of Euclid’s text. This paper considers the variety of diagrammatic approaches used in these first English translations, arguing that the strategic inclusion and exclusion of points, lines, letters, and labels, along with depictions of surveying instruments and landscapes, played crucial roles in establishing the authors’ voices, vocabularies, methodologies, and mathematical philosophies. Using simple but polysemic objects such as points and lines, and appealing to familiar practices such as drawing, using a compass, and surveying a field, Euclid’s translators projected and enforced an image of a geometry which could be seen to be already present and meaningful. Their diagrams, rather than being mere illustrations, played indispensable roles in establishing the new English geometry.