Michael Meo

This is a major work, which sets a new standard for the history of science and technology in the so-called Ancient World. The author has no difficulty demonstrating the scientific mathematics and astronomy of the Hellenistic world (that is, from 300 BC to 100 AD), but he also lays the foundation for the belief that a Scientific Revolution took place at that time and place and was only with some difficulty, recovered in the ensuing 1600 years. Essential to his thesis is a re-reading of a host of classic texts, weighting their coherence, and connecting them to one another; Russo accomplishes this with magisterial authority and erudition. What results is a comprehensive survey of the extant evidence of technological, medical, and economic developments of the Hellenistic world, something, as Russo indicates, he had to provide in the teeth of a standard narrative which collapses the Roman and Greek world, ignoring the destruction of Hellenistic science by the Romans and the incorporation of its technical advances within a prescientific Roman intellectual world, replete with magic and absent any appreciation of the crucial role of scientific inquiry. Readers of Russo will not only learn of the advances of the Hellenistic era, but will become aware of the fragility of science as a disciplined inquiry into the world; it was destroyed once in the distant past, but may be destroyed again in the not-too-distant future.