"All the algorithms for fractions now used were invented by the Hindus. The Greek treatment of fractions never advanced beyond the level of the Egyptian Rhind papyrus. […] This inability to treat a fraction as a number on its own merits is the explanation of a practice [which] was as useless as it was ambiguous. […] When we remember that the Greeks and Alexandrians continued this extraordinary performance, there is nothing remarkable about the small progress which they achieved in their arithmetic. What is remarkable is that a few of them like Archimedes should have discovered anything at all about series of numbers involving fractional quantities."