I’ve decided this month to talk about my three favorite books in ancient science. And they may surprise you! They actually cross into many different subjects that will fascinate any avid reader of history, science, or nonfiction generally. So they would make excellent surprise Christmas gifts for any such readers on your gifting list!

Or even if not into books, this is your chance to do your Christmas shopping and get me a cost-free kickback! I am an Amazon Associate, so if you click through the sales link in any of these recommendation blogs (like today’s), or indeed any article or page on my blog at all, I will get a commission on everything in your cart (except third-party Amazon Marketplace items) when you check out (even if you don’t buy the thing I recommend, and even if you buy a bunch of weird stuff like five thousand sheets of printer paper or a heated bidet-toilet), as long as you fill that cart after following my link, and complete your purchase within 24 hours. I also get bonuses if I sell over a thousand dollars of merch in a month this way.

So wondering what to buy for someone? What about a Stormtrooper Helmet or a cool-ass Hori Hori Garden Knife? Or for folks abroad (where those product links might not work), internationally available must-haves include the new Joy of Cooking (a kitchen staple) or the SAS Survival Handbook (handy for when the AI bubble bursts and collapses Western civilization).

But now to the three books I’m recommending today…

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Long on my ancient science recommendations page has been The Catapult: A History (Westholme 2013) by Tracey Rihll, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer (W. Heinemann 2009) by Josephine Marchant, and The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire by Susan Mattern. Click to buy. But if you want my take on these, keep reading!

These three books all tell stories. But the stories they tell are not just well written and engaging, they are accurate and fact-filled adventures that orient you into a whole bunch of fascinating things about the ancient world, connecting science with its ancient social and political environment and the events of history as their backdrop. You will learn a lot. And enjoy it!

Decoding the Heavens

Jo Marchant’s Decoding the Heavens has a lot about the modern story, from how the world’s first computer was discovered by sponge divers around 1910 to how it has been recently reconstructed using computerized axial tomography and ingenious rebuilds. But it also tells what we know of the ancient story of the machine and its context. Known as the Antikythera Mechanism (from the island it was shipwrecked and found near), it was possibly built by the Stoic natural philosopher Posidonius, then the most famous scientist in the Western world, or if not him, then someone of his school or ilk—and definitely of his time, the early first century B.C.

The discovery of this machine destroyed nearly every false belief historians had about ancient science and ancient culture and technology (I tell that story in my own study of ancient science). It proves there was no divide between educated theorists and shopworking craftsmen (they were the same people), there was no aversion to mechanical theories of the world, there was no distance between mathematical astronomers and physical theorists, and this was no primitive economy mired with only primitive technology. They were building advanced analog computers.

The machine is so famous they even made a cute but dumb movie out of it (which respected pretty much none of the actual genius of its gearing and construction or actual purpose).

Jo Marchant is a prolific and award-winning science writer (her own Ph.D. is in genetics but she has written on a wide range of science subjects) and she produced the most readable account of this machine to date. It will be a pleasure to any reader who might be any ounce of intrigued by the subject matter and its crossing of worlds and histories two thousand years apart.

Prince of Medicine

Susan Mattern’s The Prince of Medicine is fascinating for how it not only tells the story of Galen’s life (as best we can honestly tell it) but connects it to a larger scene of Roman Imperial society and politics, and the place in it all of medicine, academics, elite scientists, and their friends and enemies. Galen was the most famous and influential doctor of his own generation, which was around the time from the better Marcus Aurelius (of the Antonine dynasty, and last of the Five Good Emperors) to the worse Marcus Aurelius (pejoratively known as Elegabalus, the doomed teenage lost boy of the Severan dynasty), spanning the later second and early third century.

The reason this is significant is that medieval Christians loved Galen—and so they preserved tons of his writings. Well over half of all ancient science texts that survive are by Galen—some 150 or so titles, which should clue you in to how many thousands of science books were lost (including hundreds more by Galen himself—Christians were not so keen on his advanced studies of logic, most of his commentaries, or his works of philosophy). And Galen was an unusually chatty author.

While other Roman era scientists we have works from, like Ptolemy and Heron, were far more just-to-the-point, Galen loved digressing to talk about himself, his experiences, people he knew, and various social realities and curiosities. He’s the kind of guy who would suddenly mention how children made floating balloons out of pig’s bladders, or how his service as a physician to gladiators gave him opportunities to dissect rare animal carcasses and inspect dismembered human limbs, or how peasants would trick the tax man or grain merchant by changing the weight of grain through calculated moisture absorption, or even his remarks on (what we would later call the Galilean) relativity of motion while traveling by ship, and thoughts about magnets. He also loved boasting of all his important friends and even more important enemies. You’ll find him suddenly complaining about illiterate yokels attending his lectures and asking stupid questions, or ruminating on the practices of ship’s astronomers. All manner of things. From which we can reconstruct more of his life than for any other ancient scientist (or indeed almost any other person). Far more. From his modest family origins and education to his elevation to the imperial elite and all his writing activity.

Susan Mattern is a professor in the Department of Classics of the University of Georgia (right in my backyard). She is a world specialist on Galen and ancient medicine with an impressive cv. And she writes so easy and well. Her biography of Galen is never dull. And it’s generally spot on. She doesn’t take undue license. She tells it straight. And still you will be sucked in. If you or someone you are gifting for thinks about the Roman Empire every day, this is a must-read, because it gives you a window into its society, culture, and politics you don’t usually get. And even if you never think about the Roman Empire, you will find this window even more intriguing to look through. Because it’s not just a bunch of shining armor and whipping slaves. It’s a whole complex society enmeshed with an elite patronage and engagement with the sciences, with all its flaws and glories.

The Catapult

Tracey Rihll’s The Catapult is literally my favorite history book ever. You look at this massive tome and its subject and you think, “There is no way that’s not the most boring trod on any shelf.” But. Oh. No. You can’t put this thing down. Tracey Rihll is of course a renowned historian of ancient science and a specialist in ancient military technology. So, totes of interest to your Thinks of the Roman Empire Every Day gift recipient (side note: Rihll is a military historian, and Mattern is an archer; so I wondered if there was any military connection with Marchant, but alas, she is more into Victorian furniture and a calming cup of tea, which is entirely respectable). But more importantly, Rihll is a really good writer. Her dry British wit comes across on nearly every page. You will not only find yourself continually engaged by what’s on the page, but occasionally catch yourself chuckling.

The incredible feat of this book is that it is, certainly, a history of “the catapult” as a weapon, from its invention in ancient Greece (even its pre-history, in the form of early crossbows and stonebows) to its sophisticated development under the Romans (with advanced dual-cylinder torsion designs), and into its decline in the Middle Ages, when they forgot how to make synchronized torsion-cylinder catapults (before then the most advanced weapons technology in the whole world), and had to revert to the more primitive and less capable onager design. At every stage Rihll weaves together not just the history of war and the history of the technology, but also all the social history surrounding it. You’ll run into famous kings and usurpers, scientists like Archimedes and Heron, and fragmentary Roman-era treatises on metal-frame handheld torsion catapults that could shoot bullets at half the speed of early guns. Which freaked the shit out of barbarian targets, who’d never until then experienced bullets fired from a football-field away penetrating and disappearing inside their bodies.

You’ll learn about the early role of government funding of military R&D, experiments with automatic catapults (rapid repeaters), steam-powered catapults, and the discovery and use of scaling laws, and how we’ve lost the science of parabolic trajectories that would have rewritten Aristotle’s physics of motion yet all started after he wrote, because that was when it was useful to state military engineers with their fancy new mega-catapults wildly changing the nature of siege warfare, but Medieval Christians preserved no treatises on projectile motion after Aristotle (see Ancient Theories of Gravity: What Was Lost?). And in the process you’ll be walked through, well, history. Rihll uses the catapult as a catalyst for telling the entire history of the western world from just after Aristotle and the rise of Alexander the Great, through all the transformations, first to Hellenistic confederacies formed to oppose the rise of Hellenistic war kings, and thence to the Roman Empire’s capture of the West, and on to its decline and fall and what became of everything after. The catapult, and its use and evolution, becomes a character in the whole sweeping narrative.

I have long said Rihll’s Catapult exhibits the kind of writing I aspire to as a historian. And that’s just one of many reasons it tops my list of favorite books on ancient science.