Why the Ancient Greeks Matter

REVIEL NETZ is Patrick Suppes Professor of Greek Mathematics and Astronomy in the Department of Classics at Stanford University. He is the author of many celebrated books, including (with William Noel) the bestselling The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Secret of the World's Greatest Palimpsest (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 2007, winner of the Neumann Prize), and the path-breaking The Shaping of Deduction in Greek Mathematics (1999, winner of the Runciman Award), Scale, Space and Canon in Ancient Literary Culture (2020, winner of the 2021 Classical Studies category PROSE Award), and A New History of Greek Mathematics (2022, shortlisted for the Runciman Award), all published by Cambridge University Press.

• List of Figures and Captions; Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. The problematic Greek miracle; 2. A less problematic miracle: Greek science; 3. A less problematic canon: from the polis of letters to civil society; 4. Post-miracle; Bibliography; Index.

'This is a short and punchy book on a significant and controversial topic by one of the greatest Classical scholars of our time. It is clear-headed, clearly argued and robust. The book confronts – through the prism of a great expert's command of Greek science and mathematics – a theme which was once completely normative but has now become highly contested. Its approach to the special exceptionalism of Classics in Western culture as something both necessary and problematic is superbly handled, as is the author's willingness to extend way beyond Classics into the Classical Tradition, broadly interpreted, at much later moments and to confront scholarship's awkwardness around de-colonizing the discipline, as well as the variety of insalubrious appropriations of Classics especially from the far right. It will be widely read and widely disagreed with.' Jas' Elsner, University of Oxford