Today I review for you the top three handbooks in ancient science and technology. There are others, but they either suck or are amazing but out of print. These three are must-haves for any enthusiast. Two I used a lot in my own books on ancient science, and the third is new, but I very much would have employed it.

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Here are today’s recommendations:

Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era: A Sourcebook by Georgia Irby-Massie and Paul Keyser is the most thorough collection of ancient science excerpts one can easily get now. The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World by J.P. Oleson is the most thorough topic-by-topic encyclopedia on ancient technology there is. And just released in 2020 is The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science by Liba Taub, which is a brief collection of diverse essays any enthusiast would profit from. Taub is one of my favorite historians of ancient science, whom I cite frequently in my studies and list more volumes from on my Ancient Science Recommendations page. So I’ll start there.

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Taub’s new book, The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science (2020), is the most affordable and the easiest read, at just 280 or so pages of text and 60 or so more of bibliography and apparatus. She functioned as selector and editor, so unlike the other volumes I’ve recommended of hers, this only features two chapters actually by her, and the rest from other historians of ancient science. Each essays a particular unusual subject in the field, with good citations and endnotes.

They’re all pretty good. Well written, decently sourced, up to date, and intriguing. Their few defects do require some knowledge to catch though, e.g. Zhmud’s chapter on ancient histories of science (histories written in antiquity) operates on the implausible assumption that we have it all and therefore can claim there “weren’t any” in the Roman era. I refuted Zhmud on this before in The Sociology of Ancient Scientists Cannot Be Based on Medieval Source Selection and he didn’t listen to a word of it (see also now How Many Ancient Books Did the Christians Throw Away? for perspective). If you go in armed with that understanding he won’t mislead you and you can profit from what he does cover.

There are two chapters on the intersection of science and art in antiquity, an oft overlooked feature that is important to immerse yourself in to understand ancient scientists and their context. Discussions of art and craft, and science (medicine, astronomy, engineering, or anything else), explicitly overlapped in conscious discussions of the role and importance of reason, experience, evidence and observation in determining the truth as well as what’s “best.” These chapters include things often neglected, such as a discussion of Ptolemy’s theories and interests in music, and ancient discussions of art and craft experience vs. theoretical understanding, the early debate between rationalists and empiricists leading to a more coherent and scientifically fruitful way to integrate them both as essential components of real understanding of the world, allowing theoretical science to advance over mere craft knowledge.

There is also a good balance between life and physical sciences, and mathematics, including topics one might not think of but when you hear of them realize is kind of important, like “What is a plant?” Who answered that question and how, and what impact did it have? Likewise early reasoning and debates about natural vs. teleological causation, naturalism vs. creationism, and when these debates seriously started in human history, with the Presocratics. There are general, easy to read chapters on ancient astronomy, meteorology, mathematics, and “chemistry” (more primitively as theories of matter and life). But my favorite and most anticipated chapter is by another great historian of ancient science I’ve cited before, particularly on her skillful defense of mechanical conceptions of nature being common rather than “unknown” at the time (being more commonly derided and abandoned only after Christianity became an imperial religion), which she ably contributes to here in “Ancient Greek Mechanics and the Mechanical Hypothesis.” Note that she conspicuously does not commit Zhmud’s error, instead making the fact of lost works a premise in her argument.

The main value of The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Science is not as a reference book but as a kind of appendix-like textbook on ancient science that covers a lot of the missed details in understanding how ancient Greeks and Romans really thought about things, and how modern science started with them. As such it would make a good followup to any of my recommended introductions (see my Ancient Science Starter Kit).

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Next is Oleson’s Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World (2008), which is also an edited collection of experts. This covers a thousand years of Greco-Roman history on topics as diverse as mining, energy, agriculture, fishing, husbandry, architecture and machinery, manufacturing and food processing, land and sea transportation, warfare, and what archaeology and sources we have to know any of this. My favorite section is what it closes with: “Technologies of the Mind,” including “information technologies” (e.g. books and literacy), timekeeping, measures and calculations, “gadgets and scientific instruments,” and an important chapter on “inventors, invention, and attitudes toward innovation.” Which tells both versions of attitudes toward “work” (the elitist snobbery against base labor vs. elite respect for higher labor, and what makes something into that), and follows that with tons of examples of enthusiasm and respect for inventors, pretty much demonstrating which attitude prevailed (I give extensively more evidence on that point in Scientist, but this adds even more examples).

I do not recommend the related Sourcebook Oleson co-edited (I critique that in Scientist, pp. 442–45, if you want more on why). But I highly recommend this Handbook. It is the finest launching point for studying and learning about ancient technology and engineering there is. And its sweep of subjects is greater than any other collection covers. Each chapter is written by a specialist, with a solid bibliography for following down any rabbit hole that grabs you. It’s a thick book, nearly 900 pages, so I recommend spending more on the hardback if you can, though the paperback is half the price and that’s still pretty steep, though not unusual for such an excellent and extensive reference work.

There are two good uses for the Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World. The first is the obvious one: having the reference on hand when, as the occasion warrants, you want to check up on a given technological problem area and how the Greco-Romans handled or solved it (and you want something more authoritative and on-point than Wikipedia or dodgy YouTube videos). But the second is to simply read this book cover to cover (maybe a chapter every day or week). I used to read whole encyclopedias that way when I was a child. Yes, for fun. And entirely on my own initiative—though my impoverished parents were happy to encourage me by pinching pennies to buy me one volume a month (back then you could buy them, volume by volume, at supermarkets). I benefited immensely from it. And I would have loved this one if it existed then (though it would have been just out of my parents’ budget).

Because it is a fascinating romp through what the world was like then—the actual day-to-day civilization, of work and achievement, what you would see around you, what you could count on, what you might know about, or not know about but be benefiting from anyway, like the ancient equivalent of canneries and how they economized the production of durable goods in glass jars and clay pots that could find their way to whole other continents by road or sea; or the widespread development of manmade moles and quays for ports, marinas, and fisheries.

Or things they knew all about but we forgot they had, leading to early 20th century errors in critiquing supposed ancient technological failures, like the inability to develop adequate harnesses for work animals. Georges Raepsaet’s chapter on “Riding, Harnesses, and Vehicles” blows that myth out of the water with a magisterial discussion of the finds and sources and even experiments modern historians have since run to discover the reality of the rather brilliant technology the ancients had at the time, exhibiting “remarkable innovation” and “knowledge of the anatomy of the draft animal, the structure of forces of traction and their transmission, as well as the balance of harnessing technique,” even developing yokes built for both pulling and pushing, something the supposed ‘improved harnesses’ of modernity didn’t think of.

The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World is just a great read if you are into diving into the technological, the material, side of what ancient civilizations were like, and in the process learn things about the modern world, the technologies we depend on still and that have advanced on the old ways or even learned from them. Which is of especial value for anyone contemplating what we would have to resort to if modern civilization collapsed. Because the Romans accomplished extraordinary things without fossil fuels or electricity or advanced rubbers, plastics, or steels. Everyday things even that might surprise you.

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Then we close with Irby-Massie and Keyser’s Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era: A Sourcebook (2001). This is probably the most useful to get if you want a sweeping collection of ancient science in one place. It’s not a collection of essays or entries of scholarly discussion (except the introduction) but simply a collection of translated passages, selections of text from various ancient science books, spanning the whole near thousand years of progress, from the Presocratics to the Decline of Rome. It has maps, timelines, several indexes (terms, people, places, and even “metals, plants, stones, and animals”), and is organized into eleven chapters by subject field (e.g. astronomy, optics, psychology, etc.) after an introduction. It’s over 400 pages of expertly translated text, so you know you aren’t getting skimped. There is even an extended table of contents you can use to zero in on which ancient author you want to read in a subject and on what.

This is a phenomenal collection, invaluable if you want to get a feel for the breadth of ancient science writing without spending thousands of dollars hunting down all the whole books in English translation. There has only ever been one other collection as good as this, which still is worth having (as it makes different selections, particularly more extensively in gravity and inertia studies, and other more obscure things), but it’s out of print: Cohen & Drabkin’s A Source Book in Greek Science (1948), which you can now only find used from third party sellers (I won’t get a commission on those, but if you follow this link anyway and add some stuff to your cart before checking out I might get a commission on the rest, if you want to pick up a used copy of Cohen & Drabkn, a classic in the field).

Irby-Massie and Keyser do a great service in providing a comparable and complementary collection to Cohen & Drabkin, one they diversified across more sciences, making it another text any historian of ancient science needs to own. But anyone interested in peeking into this world of ancient books and thought will benefit from getting and perusing Greek Science of the Hellenistic Era: A Sourcebook.