Science writing in Greco-Roman antiquity

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Notes

1 Surprisingly, it still intrudes into Taub’s own work: the two appendices that showcase mathematical poetry simply reproduce (without commentary) older prose translations from the early and mid-twentieth century. These mask metrical form entirely, and the translation of Eratosthenes’s Letter to King Ptolemy does not otherwise signal where metrical passages begin or end, while also incorporating anachronistic mathematical notation. For a recent translation of the Letter more faithful to form, see Reviel Netz, editor, The Works of Archimedes, Volume 1: The Two Books on the Sphere and Cylinder (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 294–297. Taub refers to Netz’s translation in chapter 2.