"have desired: that he had besieged Syracuse during three years, not that the Roman people 66 might reduce it into slavery, but to prevent the "chiefs of the revolters from continuing to hold it "under oppression that he had undergone many fatigues and dangers in so long a siege: but that "he thought he had made himself ample amends by "the glory of having taken that city, and the satis"faction of having saved it from the entire ruin it "seemed to deserve." After having placed a body of troops to secure the treasury, and safe-guards in the houses of the Syracusans, who had withdrawn into his camp, he abandoned the city to be plundered. It is reported, that the riches which were pillaged in Syracuse at this time exceeded all that could have been expected at the taking of Carthage itself, An unhappy accident interrupted the joy of Marcellus, and gave him a very sensible affliction. Archimedes, at a time when all things were in this confusion at Syracuse, shut up in his closet like a man of another world, who had no regard for what passed in this, was intent upon the study of some geometrical figure, and not only his eyes, but the whole faculties of his soul, were so engaged in this contemplation, that he had neither heard the tumult of the Romans, universally busy in plundering, nor the report of the city's being taken. A soldier on a sudden comes in upon him, and bids him follow him to Marcellus. Archimedes desired him to stay a moment, till he had solved his problem and finished the demonstration of it. The soldier, who neither cared for his problem nor demonstration, enraged at this delay, drew his sword and killed him. Marcellus was exceedingly afflicted when he heard the news of his death. Not being able to restore him to life, of which he would have been very glad, he applied himself to honour his memory to the utmost of his power. He made a diligent search after all his relations, treated them with great distinction, and granted them peculiar privileges. As for Archimedes, he caused his funeral to be celebrated in the most solemn manner, and erected to him a monument amongst the great persons who had distinguished themselves most at Syracuse. ARTICLE III. SECT. I. Tomb of Archimedes discovered by Cicero. ARCHIMEDES, by his will, had desired his relations and friends to put no other epitaph on his tomb, after his death, than a cylinder circumscribed by a sphere; that is to say, a globe or spherical figure; and to set down at the bottom the proportion which those two solids, the containing and the contained, have to each other. He might have filled up the bases of the columns of his tomb with relievoes, whereon the whole history of the siege of Syracuse might have been carved, and himself appeared like another Jupiter thundering upon the Romans. But he set an infinitely higher value upon a discovery, a geometrical demonstration, than upon all the so much celebrated machines which he had invented. Hence he chose rather to do himself honour in the eyes of posterity, by the discovery he had made of the relation of a sphere to a cylinder of the same base and height; which is as two to three The Syracusans, who had been in former times so fond of the sciences, did not long retain the esteem and gratitude they owed a man who had done so much honour to their city. Less than a hundred and forty years after, Archimedes was so perfectly forgotten by his citizens, notwithstanding the great services he had done them, that they denied his having been buried at Syracuse. It is Cicero who informs us of this cir cumstance. "At the time he was quæstor in Sicily, his curiosity Cic. Tusc. Quæst. 1. v. n. 64, 66. induced him to make a search after the tomb of Archimedes; a curiosity that became a man of Cicero's genius, and which merits the imitation of all who travel. The Syracusans assured him that his search would be to no purpose, and that there was no such monument amongst them. Cicero pitied their ignorance, which only served to increase his desire of making that discovery. At length, after several fruitless attempts, he perceived without the gate of the city facing Agrigentum, amongst a great number of tombs in that place, a pillar almost entirely covered with thorns and brambles, through which he could discern the figure of a sphere and cylinder. Those, who have any taste for antiquities, may easily conceive the joy of Cicero upon this occasion. He cried out,*" that he had found what he had looked for." The place was immediately ordered to be cleared, and a passage opened to the column, on which they saw the inscription still legible, though part of the lines were obliterated by time. So that says Cicero, in concluding this account, the greatest city of Greece, and the most flourishing of old in the study of the sciences, would not have known the treasure it possessed, if a man, born in a country which it considered almost as barbarous, had not discovered for it the tomb of its citizen, so highly distinguished by the force and penetration of his mind. We are obliged to Cicero for having left us this curious and elegant account: but we cannot easily pardon him for the contemptuous manner in which he speaks at first of Archimedes. It is in the beginning, where,intending to compare the unhappy life of Dionysius the tyrant with the felicity of one passed in sober virtue and abounding with wisdom, he says‡ * Eupnxa, adopting an expression of Archimedes. + Ita nobilissima Græcia civitas, quondam verò etiam doctis-sima, sui civis urius acutissimi monumentum ignorásset, nisi ab komine Arpinate didicisset. Non ergo jam cum hujus vitâ, quâ tetrius, miserius, detestabilius excogitare nihil possum, Platonis aut Architæ vitam com "I will not compare the lives of a Plato or an Architas, persons of consummate learning and wisdom, with that of Dionysius, the most horrid, "the most miserable, and the most detestable, that can be imagined. I shall have recourse to a man "of his own city, A LITTLE OBSCURE PERSON, who lived many years after him. I shall produce him from "his * dust, and bring him upon the stage with his "rule and compasses in his hand." I say nothing of the birth of Archimedes, his greatness was of a different class. But ought the greatest geometrician of antiquity, whose sublime discoveries have in all ages been the admiration of the learned, be treated by Cicero as little and obscure, as if he had been only a common artificer employed in making machines? unless it be, perhaps, that the Romans, with whom a taste for geometry and such speculative sciences never gained much ground, esteemed nothing great but what related to government and policy. Orabunt causas meliùs, cœlique meatus Describent radio, & surgentia sidera dicent: Let others better mould the running mass DRYDEN. parabo, doctorum hominum & planè sapientum. Ex eâdem urbe HUMILEM HOMUNCIONEM à pulvere & radio excitabo, qui multis annis pòst fuit, Archimedem. * He means the dust used by geometricians. A. M. * This is the Abbé Fraguier's reflection in the short dissertation he has left us upon this passage of Cicero. SECT. II. Summary of the history of Syracuse. THE HE island of Sicily, with the greatest part of Italy, extending between the two seas, composed what was called Magna Græcia, in opposition to Greece, properly so called, which had peopled all those countries by its colonies. Syracuse was the most considerable city of Sicily, 3295. and one of the most powerful of all Greece. It was founded by Architas the Corinthian, in the third year of the seventeenth Olympiad. A. M. 3520. The first two ages of its history are very obscure, and therefore I pass over them in silence. It does not begin to be known till after the reign of Gelon, and furnishes in the sequel many great events, for the space of more than two hundred years. During all that time it exhibits a perpetual alternative of slavery under the tyrants, and liberty under a popular government; till Syracuse is at length subjected to the Romans, and makes part of their empire. I have treated all these events, except the last, in the order of time. But as they are cut into different sections, and dispersed into different books, I have thought proper to unite them here in one point of view, that their series and connection might be the more evident, from their being shewn together and in general, and the places pointed out, where they are treated with due extent. GELON. The Carthaginians, in concert with Xerxes, having attacked the Greeks who inhabited Sicily, whilst that prince was employed in making an irruption into Greece; Gelon, who had made himself master of Syracuse, obtained a celebrated victory over the Carthaginians, the very day of the battle of Thermopyla. Amilcar, their general, was killed in * Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, Vol. II. |