There are many legends connected with Archimedes, scattered among the various sources. 1 Since Syracuse was taken in 212 BCE and Archimedes was reported by the twelfth-century Byzantine writer Johannes Tzetzes to have been 75 years old at the time of his death, his dates are generally given as 287–212. However, the actual tomb may have been rediscovered in 1957, during an excavation. In popular tradition, several tombs were erroneously believed to belong to Archimedes. would have been ignorant of the tomb of its one most ingenious citizen, had not a man of Arpinum pointed it out.ĭuring the Middle Ages, the tomb of Archimedes was lost again. When I was quaestor I tracked out grave, which was unknown to the Syracusans (as they totally denied its existence), and found it enclosed all round and covered with brambles and thickets for I remembered certain doggerel lines inscribed, as I had heard, upon his tomb, which stated that a sphere along with a cylinder had been set up on the top of his grave.Slaves were sent in with sickles who cleared the ground of obstacles.So you see, one of the most famous cities of Greece. In his Tusculan Disputations, written in 45 BCE, the famous Roman orator and statesman Cicero recalled his discovery of this tomb in 76 BCE. A century after Archimedes' death, his tomb had fallen into neglect. However, no copy of this biography is known to exist today. According to Eutocius, a biography of Archimedes was written by a certain Heracleides, who is mentioned in some of Archimedes' letters.
When a nation is conquered, it often happens that the conquerors are insufficiently appreciative of its cultural achievements and the conquered nation is unable to preserve the relics of that culture. In the course of writing a biography of Marcellus, Plutarch included some information on Archimedes.Īccording to Plutarch's biography of Marcellus, the general was very upset that Archimedes had been killed and had his body buried in a suitably imposing tomb. Marcellus took the city of Syracuse after a long siege, and Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier in the chaos of the final fall of the city.
Since Sicily lies nearly on a direct line between Carthage and Rome, it became embroiled in the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE). Archimedes lived in the Greek city of Syracuse, the name the Greeks seem to have used for the whole island of Sicily on which the city is located, during the third century BCE and is said by Plutarch to have been “a relative and a friend” of King Hieron II. The man indirectly responsible for his death, the Roman general Marcellus, is also indirectly responsible for the preservation of some of what we know about him. Archimedes of SyracuseĪrchimedes is one of a small number of mathematicians of antiquity of whose works we know more than a few fragments and of whose life we know more than the approximate time and place. Greek Mathematics From 500 BCE to 500 CE Chapter 14. The history of mathematics: A brief course (2013) Part III.
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