by Richard Sheppard
In 212 B.C. a Roman army under Marcellus attacked the Greek city-state of
Syracuse, a seaport on the island of Sicily. The King of Syracuse appointed
a mathematician named Archimedes to organize the defense of the city.
Archimedes was seventy-five years old, and so absent-minded that, when engrossed
in some problem in geometry, he would forget to bathe for days at a time,
until his friends finally dragged him by force to the public baths. To defend
Syracuse, Archimedes invented various mechanical weapons, which he mounted
on the walls surrounding the city.
These devices were first tested in battle when the Romans tried to storm
the walls of Syracuse from the landward side of the city. According to Plutarch,
the Greek historian, "When Archimedes began to operate his machines,
he shot against the Romans all sorts of darts and immense masses of stone.
These hit the earth with incredible noise and violence. No man could stand
against such weapons, and the Romans were knocked down in heaps."
After the failure of his first attack, the Roman commander, Marcellus, decided
to try an amphibious assault. Sixty Roman galleys rowed toward the part
of Syracuse where the city walls faced the Mediterranean Sea. Each galley
was a formidable warship, long and narrow, powered by banks of oars.
According to Plutarch, "Archimedes's machines powered huge poles that
thrust out from the walls at the Roman ships. Some poles sank ships by dropping
great weights on them. Other poles seized the ships by an iron hand, or
a beak like a crane's beak, and lifted them up high in the air...Some ships,
lifted by engines concealed behind the walls, were whirled about and dashed
against steep rocks that stood jutting out beneath the walls...A great ship
was often lifted high into the air--a dreadful thing to see--and was kept
swinging until the sailors were all thrown out, when finally it was let
fall and dashed against the rocks...So Marcellus, unsure of what to do,
drew off his ships to a safer distance."
Marcellus, mulling over his defeat, decided that the decisive factor in
the battle had been the long-range effectiveness of Archimedes's missile-throwing
machines, which had struck the Roman soldiers when they were still far away
from the wall of Syracuse. Since Archimedes had evidently designed his apparatus
to fight from a great distance, Marcellus suspected that the machines might
be less dangerous at close range.
According to Plutarch, "The Romans decided to steal up under the walls
in the night. They thought that Archimedes's machines were set to fire only
at long range, so the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts
would fly harmlessly over their heads."
Archimedes, however, had concealed booby traps in small openings in the
outside of the wall. Plutarch wrote, "Unexpected blows were inflicted
on the attackers. When the Romans crept up close to the wall...stones came
tumbling down perpendicularly upon their heads, and the whole wall seemed
to shoot out arrows at them."
The Romans ran away in the dark. Plutarch wrote, "As infinite mischief
overwhelmed them from no visible means, the Romans began to think that they
were fighting against the gods."
After the failure of their night attack, the Romans were badly demoralized.
According to Plutarch, "Such a terror seized the Romans that if they
saw just a little rope or piece of wood projecting over the wall, they instantly
turned their backs and fled, shouting, There it is again! Archimedes is
aiming some machine at us!" Another Roman historian reported that Marcellus
and his men were most intimidated by a parabolic mirror of polished metal,
which Archimedes set up atop the wall of Syracuse. With this mirror Archimedes
focused the sun's rays on Roman ships, setting them afire.
Marcellus eventually decided that the only way to capture Syracuse was to
starve the defenders into submission; so the Romans built a camp and besieged
the city from a safe distance.
During a truce called to negotiate an exchange of prisoners, Marcellus was
allowed to briefly enter the city of Syracuse with his ambassadors. He took
advantage of this opporunity to study the wall from the inside, and saw
dangerous-looking gadgets lined up all along the rampart, except in one
place where the wall had been damaged and was being repaired.
During the feast of Diana, when the Syracusans "were given up to wine
and sport," Marcellus led a handful of Roman commandos to the damaged
section of wall that was not defended by Archimedes's machines. Nobody in
Syracuse noticed the raiders as they climbed over the top the wall and dropped
inside the city. Marcellus opened a city gate, and the whole Roman army
charged into Syracuse, capturing the city.
As the victorious Romans began looting, Marcellus gave orders that Archimedes
was not to be killed. Marcellus wanted to claim Archimedes as his personal
captive.
According to Plutarch, "As fate would have it, Archimedes was at that
moment intent on working out some problem in geometry by a diagram. Having
fixed his eyes and his mind alike on the diagram, Archimedes never noticed
the incursion of the Romans, or that the city was taken. While he was lost
in this transport of study and contemplation, a Roman soldier came upon
him, and commanded Archimedes to follow him to Marcellus. When Archimedes
refused to obey until he had worked out his problem, the soldier, enraged,
drew his sword and ran him through."
SOURCES:
A Manual of Greek Mathematics. by Sir Thomas L. Heath. Oxford University
Press. 1931. (New Dover edition, 1961.)
Episodes from the Early History of Mathematics. by Asger Aaboe. Random House.
1964.
The Life of Marcellus. by Plutarch.
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