The question of when and why Greek mathematics began to wane is both controversial and complex. Although it is always perilous to fix dividing lines in the study of history, one may safely say that under Roman rule the overall picture was one of declining mathematical activity and originality. The new masters of the Mediterranean were a practical and utilitarian people, who never showed any inclination or aptitude for extensive theoretical studies. It is remarkable that although the Roman and Greek civilizations existed over roughly the same centuries 750 B.C. to A.D. 450 in all that time there appeared no Roman mathematician of note. The chief Roman concern was the application of arithmetic and geometry to impressive engineering projects: viaducts, bridges, roads that survive even today, public buildings, and land surveys. Even among the Roman engineers, the small amount of mathematics they required could be applied in practice without any grasp of the theory behind it. Agrippa for instance, in carrying out Julius Caesar's plan of surveying the empire, was obliged to call in specialists from Alexandria to carry out the measurements. Cicero's attitude illustrated the Roman intellectuals' contempt for theoretical knowledge. In Tuscalan Disputations he recorded:
The Greeks held the geometer in the highest honor; accordingly nothing made more brilliant progress among them than mathematics. But we have established as the limits of this art its usefulness in measuring and counting.
In would be wrong to conclude that Alexandrian mathematics immediately deteriorated with Roman neglect, or that intellectual stagnation could not be temporarily arrested by exceptional individuals working in particular fields. There were occasional rallies, as in the period 250-350, when the extraordinary talents of Diophantus and Pappus succeeded in making their age a "silver age" of Greek mathematics. But cultural interests in the Roman world were by this time so completely alienated from mathematics that their brilliant work aroused but slight and passing attention.