236 The Fifth General Meeting. 



an ennobling science, and men of cultivated minds and noble aspira- 

 tions had ever been devoted to its pursuits, lie would mention an 

 example as an illustration, in Cicero, who might be called the child 

 of Archoeolog)^ His writings breathe everywhere a fondness for 

 antiquity. " To be ignorant of what happened before we were 

 born," says he, " is to be an everlasting baby." His treatise " De 

 natura Deorum" is replete with palaeontology; but there was an 

 incident in the life of this illustrious man to which he would more 

 particularly invite their attention on the present occasion. To 

 Cicero was assigned the Province of Sicily ; he was sent thither as 

 Qusestor, and he said of himself that he received the office, not so 

 much as a gift as a sacred trust, which he would only discharge by 

 devoting his whole attention to it, and by postponing every plea- 

 sure, and even the gratification of his appetite, to a faithful per- 

 formance of the duties it imposed. Notwithstanding this ; notwith- 

 standing all the cares and distractions of goverment, he could yet 

 find time to indulge his favorite pursuit of archaeology : he made 

 his excursions through the island to see everything in it that was 

 curious; that was, in short, worth seeing. In the course of his 

 tour he comes to Syracuse, and there he had a particular object in 

 view. He wanted to see the tomb of Archimedes, for in the course 

 of his studies he had heard that that great geometrician was buried 

 there, and that on his tomb a sphere and cylinder (emblematical of 

 his pursuits) were engraven, and also some verses inscribed; and 

 he was determined to verify the fact by personal inspection. He 

 questioned the great men of Syracuse — the magistrates — on the 

 subject, and to his surprise they could give him no information 

 whatever about it. They conducted him, however, to the gate of the 

 city, where stood a great number of their old sepulchres, and there 

 he observed, in a spot overgrown with shrubs and briars, a small 

 column — a "columella" he calls it — whose head first appeared 

 above the bushes. Conceive his delight, when he sees the figure 

 of the sphere and cylinder upon it ! This he tell the magistrates 

 was the very thing he was in search of, and then he goes into his 

 work with an ardour with could not be surpassed even by a mem- 

 ber of the "Wiltshire Archaeological Society. Men are sent with 



