![]() This subject was the promotion of the pursuit of knowledge over material riches. In fact, Cicero mentions that his story about discovering Archimedes’ tomb was a digression from the subject he was writing about. ![]() Whilst this story may seem to be about a lost tomb being discovered by a Roman orator, it has a more important point to make, as it is found in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. The inscriptions stated that there was a stone cylinder and sphere on the tomb, which enabled Cicero to locate Archimedes’ tomb.Ĭicero and the magistrates discovering the tomb of Archimedes by Benjamin West, 1796 ( Wikimedia Commons ) Cicero identified the tomb based on some lines of verse he heard were inscribed on the monument. Cicero then decided to search for the tomb, and managed to find it near the Agrigentine Gate. The Syracusans, however, were unaware of this tomb, and denied that it even existed. During his tenure there, he decided to visit the tomb of Archimedes. According to the account, Cicero was in Sicily serving as a quaestor. The visit of Cicero to the tomb of Archimedes can be found in the Roman orator’s Tusculan Disputations, a series of books written with the aim of popularizing Stoic philosophy. The Death of Archimedes by Thomas Degeorge, 1815 ( Wikimedia Commons ) The news of Archimedes’ death, however, was not well received by Marcellus, who recognised Archimedes as a great scientific thinker, and had ordered that he should not be harmed. According to this version of the story, Archimedes was carrying some mathematical instruments, which were mistaken as valuable items by a Roman soldier, hence resulting in his death. Plutarch also mentions an alternate version of the story, in which Archimedes was killed whilst attempting to surrender to the Romans. ![]() The reason for this refusal was supposedly due to his contemplation of a mathematical diagram, and his wanting to solve that problem, rather than meeting the general. ![]() As Syracuse was an ally of the Carthaginians, it was besieged by the Romans, and finally fell after two years.Īrchimedes directing the defenses of Syracuse by Thomas Ralph Spence, 1895 ( Wikimedia Commons )Īccording to Plutarch’s account, Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier when he declined to meet the victorious Roman general, Marcellus. This was a war fought between Rome and her rival in the Mediterranean, Carthage, towards the end of the 3 rd century B.C. Archimedes died around 212 B.C., a casualty of the Second Punic War. Although it is known that a biography of Archimedes was written by his friend, Heracleides, this work is no in existence, hence the lack of details about the life of this great thinker. At that time, the city was an autonomous Greek colony of Magna Graecia. Portrait of Archimedes by Luis Figuier, 1881 ( Wikimedia Commons )Īccording to the available sources, Archimedes was born around 287 B.C. Apart from his contributions to scientific knowledge and his inventions, including a screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines, among many others, little is known about the life of Archimedes. An anecdote about how he discovered the ‘Archimedes Principle’, and the accompanying catchphrase ‘Eureka’ (meaning ‘I got it’ in Greek) is one of the most famous stories about scientific discoveries. Source: BigStockPhotoĪrchimedes was a mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer, and is probably one of the most prominent scientific thinkers of the ancient Greek world. As a matter of fact, Cicero claimed that not only did he visit the tomb of Archimedes, but he actually re-discovered it after it had long been forgotten.Ĭicero at the tomb of Archimedes. One famous example of a Roman visiting a Greek tomb was that of the Republican orator, Cicero. Incidentally, this tradition itself has its precedence in the Greek custom of visiting the tombs of Homeric heroes. Another way that Roman admiration for the Greeks could be expressed was through visiting the tombs of famous Greeks. These imitations, however, were not very successful, and at times even comical. Another Roman emperor, Caracalla, was obsessed with Alexander the Great, and sought to emulate his idol in many ways. The emperor Nero, for instance, was a Philhellene who travelled extensively around Greece and even gave a huge tax-exemption to the province. The Romans were great admirers of the Greeks and their civilization.
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