This post summarizes the contents of the talk I have given within the workshop recently organised in Athens (Oct 11th and 12th) by the center for history and philosophy of sciences in the university of Athens, with the cooperation of centre Koyré and the support of the French programme “GDR histoire des mathématiques” [argument; program].

As the program shows, I had first proposed to present my research and reflections on the role of rhetorical paraphrasis in Diophantus’s Arithmetica. Finally, I came up to changing my subject, in order to present and discuss the structure of the introduction to the collective publication on series of problems scheduled for 2014 or beginning of 2015 the latest [project and contents]. One reason was that I have deeply immersed in this revision for the past month, beginning with the intensive discussions held with Bernard, Marc, Ursula, Katalin and Iolanda at mid-september. The other reason was that it gave me an opportunity to present the argument in English, although all previous texts, including the introduction, have been written in French and tends now to be long.

The reader will find here are my [slides] and, more importantly, my semi-detailed notes from the talk: I have only added remarks about the discussions we have had in Athens, and references to the first complete version of the introduction, that I have written in French just after the end of the workshop [notes]. These documents might serve as a guide for the contributors for which French is an obstacle, as also as a convenient digest for colleagues who would like to know something about the project but cannot read French.

Alain Bernard

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