“Archimedes to Dositheus greeting.

“When I heard that Conon, who was my friend in his lifetime, was dead, but that you were acquainted with Conon and withal versed in geometry, while I grieved for the loss not only of a friend but of an admirable mathematician, I set myself the task of communicating to you, as I had intended to send to Conon, a certain geometrical theorem which had not been investigated before but has now been investigated by me, and which I first discovered by means of mechanics and then exhibited by means of geometry. Now some of the earlier geometers tried to prove it possible to find a rectilineal area equal to a given circle and a given segment of a circle; and after that they endeavoured to square the area bounded by the section of the whole cone and a straight line, assuming lemmas not easily conceded, so that it was recognised by most people that the problem was not solved. But I am not aware that any one of my predecessors has attempted to square the segment bounded by a straight line and a section of a rightangled cone [a parabola], of which problem I have now discovered the solution.