the Romans, inspired the foreign soldiers with the same fear. Both the one and the other having therefore taken arms, whilst the deputies were still in the camp of Marcellus, they began by cutting the throats of the magistrates newly elected; and dispersing themselves on all sides, they put to the sword all they met, and plundered whatever fell in their way. That they might not be without leaders, they appointed six officers, three to command in Achradina, and three in the Isle. The tumult being at length appeased, the foreign troops were informed from all hands, that it was concluded with the Romans, that their cause should be entirely distinct from that of the deserters. At the same instant, the deputies who had been sent to Marcellus arrived, who fully undeceived them. Amongst those who commanded in the Isle, there was a Spaniard named Mericus: means were found to corrupt him. He gave up the gate near the fountain Arethusa to soldiers, sent by Marcellus in the night to take possession of it. At day-break the next morning, Marcellus made a false attack on the Achradina, to draw all the forces of the citadel, and the Isle adjoining to it, to that side, and to enable some vessels he had prepared to throw troops into the Isle, which would be unguarded. Every thing succeeded according to his plan. The soldiers, whom those vessels had landed in the Isle, finding almost all the posts abandoned, and the gates, by which the garrison of the citadel had marched out against Marcellus, still open, they took possession of them after a slight encounMarcellus having received advice that he was master of the Isle, and of part of Achradina, and that Mericus, with the body under his command, had joined his troops, ordered a retreat to be sounded, that the treasures of the kings might not be plundered. "They did not rise so high in their amount as was imagined. ter. The deserters having escaped, a passage being expressly left open for them, the Syracusans opened all the gates of Achradina to Marcellus, and sent deputies to him, with instructions to demand nothing farther from him than the preservation of the lives of themselves and their children. Marcellus having assembled his council, and some Syracusans who were in his camp, gave his answer to the deputies in their presence: "That Hiero, for fifty years, had not done the Roman people more good, than those who had been masters of Syracuse some years past had intended to do them harm; but that their ill-will had fallen upon their own heads, and they had punished themselves for their violation of treaties in a more severe manner than the Romans could have desired: that he had besieged Syracuse during three years, not that the Roman people 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 satisfaction of having saved it from the entire ruin it seemed to deserve." After having placed a body of troops to secure the treasury, and safeguards 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 has no regard for what is passing 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 circumstance. At the time he was quæstor in Sicily,* his curiosity induced him to make a search after the tomb of Archimedes; a curiosity worthy 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, a man of Arpinum, 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, "I will not compare the lives of a Plato or an Archytas, 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 great *Cic. Tusc. Quæst. I. v. n. 64. 66. medes. Eguna, adopting an expression of Archi Ita nobilissima Græciæ civitas, quondam verò etiam doctissima, sui civis unius acutissimi monumentuin ignorâsset, nisi ab homine Arpinate didicisset. Non ergo jam cum hujus vitâ, quâ tetrius, miserius, detestabilius excogitare nihil possum, Platonis aut Archytæ vitam comparabo, doctorum hominum et planè sapientum. Ex eâdem urbe HUMILEM HOMUNCIONEM à pulvere et radio excitabo, qui multis annis post fuit, Archimedem. He means the dust used by geometricians ness 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 a little and obscure person, 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, et surgentia sidera dicent: Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.-Virg. Æn. vi Let others better mould the running mass Plead better at the bar, describe the skies, And when the stars descend and when they rise; But, Rome, 'tis thine alone with awful sway To rule mankind, and make the world obey; Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way.-Dryden. 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 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 SiA. M. 3295. cily, and one of the most powerful of all Greece. It was founded by Archias the Corinthian, in the third year of the seventeenth Olympiad. 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 connexion might be the more evident, from their being shown together and in general, and the places pointed out, where they are treated with due ex tent. * Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, vol, ii. GELON. The Carthaginians, in concert with A. M. 3520. 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 this battle. Historians speak differently of his death, which has occasioned my falling into a contradiction. For on one side, I suppose, with Diodorus Siculus,* that he was killed by the Sicilians in the battle; and on the other I say, after Herodotus, that to avoid the shame of surviving his defeat, he threw himself into the pile, in which he had sacrificed many human victims. Gelon, upon returning from his victory, repaired A. M. 3525. to the assembly without arms or guards, to give the people an account of his conduct. He was chosen king unanimously. He reigned five or six years, solely employed in the truly royal care of making his people happy. See vols. i. and iii. HIERO I. Hiero, the eldest of Gelon's brothers, A. M. 3532. succeeded him. The beginning of his reign was worthy of great praise. Simonides and Pindar vied with each other in celebrating him. The latter part of it did not answer the former. He reigned eleven years. See vol. iii. THRASYBULUS. Thrasybulus his brother sucA. M. 3543. ceeded him. He rendered himself odious to all his subjects by his vices and cruelty. They expelled him the throne and city, after a reign of one year. See vol. iii. A. M. 3544. years. Times of Liberty. After his expulsion, Syracuse and all Sicily enjoyed their liberty for the space of almost sixty An annual festival was instituted to celebrate the day upon which their liberty was re-established. Syracuse attacked by the Athenians. During this interval, the Athenians, animated by A. M. 3588. the warm exhortations of Alcibiades, turned their arms against Syracuse: this was in the sixth year of the Peloponnesian war. How fatal the event of this war was to the Athenians, may be seen in vol. iii. DIONYSIUS the elder. The reign of this prince A. M. 3598. is famous for its length of thirty-eight years; and still more for the extraordinary events with which it was attended, See vols. i. and iv. * In the history of the Carthaginians. |