It is amazing what Euclid was able to prove and, frankly, even imagine using just geometric figures.

Nowadays, we have symbolic notation. The only research articles I read are for epidemiology, so I don't know how much notation is used in pure math journals. But I can't remember seeing any notation in those articles beyond what one would encounter in high school. I guess authors see more value in deceptive narrative and descend into strict logical languages only when necessary.