The volumes in Sciences of Antiquity explore how the ancients saw, interpreted and handled the natural world, from the elements to the most complex of living things. Their discussions on these matters formed a resource for those who later worked on the same topics, including scientists. A consequent purpose is to provide historians with an understanding of the materials with which later writers, rather than passively receiving and transmitting ancient ideas, constructed their own world view.
By Vivian Nutton
December 14, 2023
The third edition of this magisterial account of medicine in the Greek and Roman worlds, written by the foremost expert on the subject, has been updated to incorporate the many new discoveries made in the field over the past decade. This revised volume includes discussions of several new or ...
By Tamysn Barton
October 31, 1994
An account of astrology from its beginnings in Mesopotamia, focusing on the Greco-Roman world, Ancient Astrology examines the theoretical development and changing social and political role of astrology....
By Gavin Hardy, Laurence Totelin
October 09, 2015
Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin have brought together their botanical and historical knowledge to produce this unique overview of ancient botany. It examines all the founding texts of botanical science, such as Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants, Dioscorides' Materia Medica, Pliny the Elder's ...
By Rosemary Wright
July 28, 1995
The popularity of Stephen Hawking's work has put cosmology back in the public eye. The question of how the universe began, and why it hangs together, still puzzles scientists. Their puzzlement began two and a half thousand years ago when Greek philosophers first 'looked up at the sky and formed a ...
By Robert Hannah
January 08, 2009
Time in Antiquity offers a detailed survey of the science of time and its measurement in the Greek and Roman worlds, including Babylon and Egypt where many of the first advances were made. Robert Hannah focuses on the physical aspects of time measurement, locating the means of measurement, and the ...
By Serafina Cuomo
September 07, 2001
The theorem of Pythagoras, Euclid's "Elements", Archimedes' method to find the volume of a sphere: all parts of the invaluable legacy of ancient mathematics. But ancient mathematics was also about counting and measuring, surveying land and attributing mystical significance to the number six. This ...
By Roger French
December 01, 1994
Ancient Natural History surveys the ways in which people in the ancient world thought about nature. The writings of Aristotle, Theophrastus, Strabo, Pliny are examined, as well as the popular beliefs of their contemporaries. Roger French finds that the same natural-historical material was used to ...
By Liba Taub
August 22, 2003
The first book of its kind in English, Ancient Meteorology discusses Greek and Roman approaches and attitudes to this broad discipline, which in classical antiquity included not only 'weather', but occurrences such as earthquakes and comets that today would be regarded as geological, astronomical ...