96 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



calculus, reaching thus a level which was not surpassed for 2000 

 years. Born in Syracuse, probably 287 B.C., the greater part of 

 his life was spent in his native city, to which he rendered on oc- 

 casion invaluable services as a military engineer. According to 

 Livy it was due to the efforts of Archimedes that the Romans 

 .under Marcellus were held in check during the protracted siege 

 of Syracuse. On the fall of the city in 212 B.C. the venerable 

 mathematician, absorbed in a geometrical problem, was killed by 

 a Roman soldier, much to the regret of Marcellus, who appre- 

 ciated and would have spared him. The conqueror carried out 

 the wish of Archimedes by erecting a monument with a mathe- 

 matical figure, and this was with some difficulty rediscovered and 

 put in order by Cicero, during his official residence in Sicily, 75 B.C. 



Nothing afflicted Marcellus so much as the death of Archimedes, 

 who was then, as fate would have it, intent upon working out some 

 problem by a diagram, and having fixed his mind alike and his eyes 

 upon the subject of his speculation, he never noticed the incursion 

 of the Romans, nor that the city was taken. In this transport of 

 study and contemplation, a soldier, unexpectedly coming up to him 

 commanded him to follow to Marcellus, which he declined to do be- 

 fore he had worked out his problem to a demonstration ; the soldier, 

 enraged, drew his sword and ran him through. Others write, that a 

 Roman soldier, running upon him with a drawn sword, offered to kill 

 him ; and that Archimedes, looking back, earnestly besought him to 

 hold his hand a little while, that he might not leave what he was 

 at work upon inconclusive and imperfect; but the soldier, nothing 

 moved by his entreaty, instantly killed him. Others again relate, 

 that as Archimedes was carrying to Marcellus mathematical instru- 

 ments, dials, spheres, and angles, by which the magnitude of the sun 

 might be measured to the sight, some soldiers seeing him, and think- 

 ing that he carried gold in a vessel, slew him. Certain it is, that his 

 death was very afflicting to Marcellus ; and that Marcellus ever after 

 regarded him that killed him as a murderer ; and that he sought for 

 his kindred and honored them with signal favours. Plutarch. 



The known works of Archimedes include the following : two 

 books on the Equilibrium of Planes, with an interpolated treatise 



