According to popular account given by Plutarch in his heroic tale Parallel Lives, Arcimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram when the city was captured. Īrchimedes' name was well known to the Romans, and the victorious General Marcellus sent out orders that the scholar was not to be harmed. However, his story comes to an end after the siege, rather than during it. Archimedes' fortifications effectively repelled invaders, but the city fell to treachery, and Archimedes lost his life in the aftermath. Consequently, a Roman force led by the General Marcus Claudius Marcellus WP laid siege to the port city by both land and sea.

Syracuse formed an alliance with Carthage WP in the Second Punic War WP against the Romans, and so Syracuse and Rome became enemies. Many of the defense mechanisms Archimedes invented effectively demolished a variety of would-be invaders. However, as long as Archimedes existed, and his methods of protecting Syracuse were in place, they would fear to tread anywhere near the city's walls. » In truth, the Roman armies who had shown overwhelming might on the planes of both ground and sea were convinced that they would be able to conquer the city-state of Syracuse should just that single old man disappear. « If you were to see these works, you would easily understand how the intelligence of a single human being can bring about something amazing if they are given proper stage. 200 BC, wrote a following account in his Universal History WP some seventy years after Archimedes' death. The ancient Greek historian Polybius WP, born in c. Archimedes' fame as an engineer was known throughout the land from early on. It is easy to imagine how he ended up in the position of chief engineer tasked with the defense of the city-state. Plutarch WP wrote in his Parallel Lives WP that Archimedes was related to King Hiero II WP, the ruler of Syracuse. The seaside city-state relied on his supreme war machines far more than it did on ordinary soldiers. Īrchimedes was also the cornerstone of Syracuse's defenses, as he was even more talented as an engineer than he was a mathematician. Archimedes had no such interest, and was said to have been fixated on the beauty and accuracy of his own theorems. Most scholars of his era treasured recognition just as much as discovery, and basked in the praise of the citizens around them. Archimedes lived in proud seclusion far from Alexandria WP, the hotbed of academic pursuits at the time, and preferred written correspondence to face-to-face dialogue. While his peers considered him a genius, they also considered him rather strange.

Archimedes' famous achievements involve a range of geometrical theorems from ' On the Equilibrium of Planes WP', ' On the Measurement of a Circle WP', and ' On the Sphere and Cylinder WP', as well as ' Archimedes' cattle problem WP' in Diophantine analysis WP. 212 BC, he resided in the city of Syracuse WP, located on the eastern coast of current-day Sicily WP. He was born to a line of artists, and took up astronomy just as his father did before him.

212 BC as a mathematician, engineer, and astronomer. A ' celebrated genius in human history.' A mathematician ahead of his time.

Archimedes sphere