The Key Themes in Ancient History series, to which this volume belongs, introduces ‘basic topics’ in Classics and ancient history. T.’s contribution to this series is an introduction to the field of ancient science, which distinguishes itself from other such introductions by prioritising ‘the diversity of genres and the types of texts’ (p. ix) employed for the communication of science in the classical world. So, where T.E. Rihll's comparable volume (Greek Science [1999]) organises ancient science around subject areas, and G.E.R. Lloyd's introduction proceeds chronologically (Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle [1970]; Greek Science after Aristotle [1973]), T.’s focus upon genre shows how literary aspects of ancient science writing situate these texts within determinate and culturally significant contexts. T.’s book thus epitomises a recent trend in the study of ancient science, which emphasises the rhetorical function and social context of literary forms used for technical topics (e.g. M. Asper [ed.], Writing Science: Medical and Mathematical Authorship in Ancient Greece [2013] or R. Netz, Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and Alexandrian Aesthetics [2009]). This approach welcomes newcomers to the field by placing ancient science in proximity with other, more traditionally established areas of classical scholarship, such as the study of literature, rhetoric or social and political history.

The book consists of a substantive introduction, five chapters examining major genres employed for Greek and Roman science writing (poetry, letters, encyclopaedia, commentary and biography) and a brief conclusion, which restates the basic idea of the volume and takes stock of some forms of Graeco-Roman science writing that the author left aside. Two appendices provide translations of the arithmetical epigrams from Book 14 of The Greek Anthology (reproduced from W.R. Paton [trans.], The Greek Anthology, Books 13–16, Vol. 5. LCL 86 [1918]) and Eratosthenes’ Letter to King Ptolemy (reproduced from M.R. Cohen & I.E. Drabkin, A Source Book in Greek Science [1948]). A bibliographical essay supplements the footnotes and references with summaries outlining other approaches to ancient science and providing scholarship relevant to specific subject areas. The backmatter consists of an index of topics, titles and names (ancient and modern), while the frontmatter includes a list of illustrations and a short preface explaining T.’s choice to highlight the importance of literary form.

The introductory chapter positions T.’s approach with respect to the historiographical context, arguing for functional definitions of key terms such as genre, literary format, Graeco-Roman and, of course, science itself. These operational terms are defined in accessible language, so they are readily comprehensible even as they enable T.’s literary-critical approach. An extensive section of the introductory chapter on ‘Describing Texts’ historicises the received norm typically supposed for technical writing, that is, the systematic treatise, so that it appears as only one format employed among others to communicate scientific thought. She goes further still by claiming that a generalised view of science writing is perhaps less helpful than sustained attention to specific texts and their analysis in relation to specific social and historical contexts. By situating the treatise among its rival genres, T. clears the way to present the five genres by drawing connections among a series of case studies.

The case studies include some delightful examples of science writing composed in the genres under investigation. Most chapters mention numerous examples of a selected genre for context and finally analyse one or two major examples extensively, while others, such as the third chapter, treat a single text almost exclusively. The first chapter on poetry, by contrast, develops a major division of science writing in verse into didactic and epigram through numerous examples, some of which are quite familiar, such as Aratus’ Phaenomena, Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things or Manilius’ Astronomica, and others truly obscure, such as the isopsephic epigrams of Leonides (cf. OCD ⁴ s.v. Leonidas [3]). In the last two sections, highlighting intertextual connections between the so-called ‘Cattle Problem’ (an epigram perhaps by Archimedes featuring an impossibly difficult logistikon problema), the tradition of Homeric verse and certain critiques of the geographical knowledge received from the Homeric tradition in the Geography of Eratosthenes (to whom the epigram is addressed), T. reveals the cultural continuity between the competitive context of major scientific expertise, typified by the Cattle Problem, and other more generally available contexts of elite cultural attainment, represented by the mythological and traditional knowledge presupposed in the other mathematical epigrams of the Greek Anthology.

The second chapter similarly first introduces its genre through analysis of the paradigmatic letters of Epicurus and then pursues a more extensive reading of Eratosthenes’ Letter to King Ptolemy, but also reveals a more complicated argument unfolding across the chapters. The form of Eratosthenes’ letter, T. argues, transforms a mathematical technique for doubling the cube into an honorary gift for the letter's addressee, aimed at achieving multiple messages for multiple audiences at once. In particular, analysis of the epigram appended to Eratosthenes’ Letter to King Ptolemy reveals how the mathematical epigrams of Chapter 1 communicate across multiple registers of intertextuality, not only with other epigrams but also with other genres of science writing. The third chapter further complicates the relationship among genres and specific written texts through an analysis of Pliny's encyclopaedia, a text that so far exceeds its generic predecessors (i.e. Varro, Cato and Celsus) in its accessible unification of diverse fields of theoretical inquiry that it must be regarded, according to T., as sui generis. Still, the meteorological content which she emphasises reveals a kinship between Pliny's masterpiece and the meteorological commentaries that T. goes on to treat in Chapter 4.

This chapter on commentaries, structurally more akin to the first chapter than the second or third, features a brief introduction to the genre of commentary through numerous examples and then focuses on three commentaries on Aristotle's Meteorology (those of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Philoponus and Olympiodorus). T. explains that, to clarify meteorological phenomena, Aristotle and his commentators alike employ two ‘explanatory tactics’, namely, drawing upon a variety of sources and authorities (including poetic tradition, paraphrased endoxa, citations of predecessors and empirical evidence) and referring to diagrams to make paradigmatic demonstrations. She concludes that the commentary is a characteristically open-ended form, receptive to a multitude of voices, genres, traditions, authorities and techniques of demonstration. In this way, the chapter on commentary more than any other synthesises the intertextual play among genres already raised in the preceding chapters.

Meanwhile, the fifth chapter, treating the literary ‘lives’ (bioi) of Pythagoras by Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry and Iamblichus, links the intellectual doxography included in a biographical narrative to the ‘aretalogical’ history of an intellectual hero (that is, the account of the outstanding virtue which the narrative of his life exemplifies), as inseparable aspects of the genre, thus revealing a continuity between scientific thinking and the exemplary life of an intellectual community. Therefore, any of these chapters may be read on its own, but one can also follow a continuous argument on the relationships among genres and authorities unfolding across the five chapters.

T.’s volume must be considered an invaluable investigation of ancient science writing, from which an orientation towards ancient science may be acquired and then extended to other areas of the field. The major strength of her approach is that she places ancient science considerably closer to other fields in which classical scholars engage themselves, such as cultural history, literary studies and aesthetics. This volume will be useful especially to advanced undergraduates in Classics and to postgraduate students preparing for qualifying exams, but students pursuing other academic programmes can also make good use of it. Transliteration of all Greek and Latin terms, the listing of dates wherever proper names are first introduced and a clear, comprehensible writing style make this difficult subject accessible. Scholars working in other areas will find this a relatable introduction, and I imagine that even scholars working on ancient science and taking a similarly literary-critical approach will find insightful discussions of specific cases worthy of review for their own research. In summary, this stimulating book invites students and researchers alike to pursue further questions and to explore this robust field more widely and deeply.