Diophantus of Alexandria was a Greek mathematician, who was the author of two main works: On Polygonal Numbers, which survives incomplete, and the Arithmetica in thirteen books, most of it extant, made up of arithmetical problems that are solved through algebraic equations.

Greek mathematics refers to mathematics texts and ideas stemming from the Archaic through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, mostly from the 5th century BC to the 6th century AD, around the shores of the Mediterranean. Greek mathematicians lived in cities spread over the entire region, from Anatolia to Italy and North Africa, but were united by Greek culture and the Greek language. The development of mathematics as a theoretical discipline and the use of deductive reasoning in proofs is an important difference between Greek mathematics and those of preceding civilizations.