"The Greeks were the first mathematicians who are still 'real'
to us to-day. Oriental mathematics may be an interesting
curiosity, but Greek mathematics is the real thing. The Greeks
first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand;
as Littlewood said to me once, they are not clever schoolboys
or 'scholarship candidates', but 'Fellows of another college'."
[ G.H. Hardy, _A Mathematician's Apology_, in chapter 8. ]
Credibly it is true that Greek mathematics is 'real to us today'.
But it could also be true that Greek and modern mathematics are the actual 'curiosity'. In fact, for example, the faith in axiomatic-deductive procedures can be found in just two historical-geographical 'enclaves': in ancient Greek mathematics and in the last two centuries of our mathematics. Even from Proclus to the XVIII century, nobody really thought useful to 'prove' theorems: "rigor is for philosophers, not for mathematicians".
Even for the infinite and for the coninuous, the other great creations of Greek Mathematics 'real' in our mathematics, it is difficult to believe their existence 'real' and their absence 'curious'.
It is anyway sure that our matematics works very well and that it is 'true' in almost every sense of the word, but for the sense true=real.
Sincerely yours
Luigi Borzacchini