Is God a Mathematician_ - Mario Livio [24]
He [Archimedes] at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down with incredible noise and violence; against which no man could stand; for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. At the same time huge poles thrust out from the walls over the ships sunk some by great weights which they let down from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a crane’s beak and, when they had drawn them up by the prow, and set them on end upon the poop, they plunged them to the bottom of the sea…A ship was frequently lifted up to a great height in the air (a dreadful thing to behold), and was rolled to and fro, and kept swinging, until the mariners were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or let fall.
The fear of the Archimedean devices became so extreme that “if they [the Roman soldiers] did but see a piece of rope or wood projecting above the wall, they would cry ‘there it is again,’ declaring that Archimedes was setting some engine in motion against them, and would turn their backs and run away.” Even Marcellus was deeply impressed, complaining to his own crew of military engineers: “Shall we not make an end of fighting against this geometrical Briareus [the hundred-armed giant, son of Uranus and Gaia] who, sitting at ease by the sea, plays pitch and toss with our ships to our confusion, and by the multitude of missiles that he hurls at us outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?”
According to another popular legend that appeared first in the writings of the great Greek physician Galen (ca. AD 129–200), Archimedes used an assembly of mirrors that focused the Sun’s rays to burn the Roman ships. The sixth century Byzantine architect Anthemius of Tralles and a number of twelfth century historians repeated this fantastic story, even though the actual feasibility of such a feat remains uncertain. Still, the collection of almost mythological tales does provide us with rich testimony as to the veneration that “the wise one” inspired in later generations.
As I noted earlier, Archimedes himself—that highly esteemed “geometrical Briareus”—attached no particular significance to all of his military toys; he basically regarded them as diversions of geometry at play. Unfortunately, this aloof attitude may have eventually cost Archimedes his life. When the Romans finally captured Syracuse, Archimedes was so busy drawing his geometrical diagrams on a dust-filled tray that he failed to notice the tumult of war. According to some accounts, when a Roman soldier ordered Archimedes to follow him to Marcellus, the old geometer retorted indignantly: “Fellow, stand away from my diagram.” This reply infuriated the soldier to such a degree that, disobeying his commander’s specific orders, he unsheathed his sword and slew the greatest mathematician of antiquity. Figure 11 shows what is believed to be a reproduction (from the eighteenth century) of a mosaic found in Herculaneum depicting the final moments in the life of “the master.”
Archimedes’ death marked, in some sense, the end of an extraordinarily vibrant era in the history of mathematics. As the British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked:
The death of Archimedes at the hands of a Roman soldier is symbolical of a world change of the first magnitude. The Romans were a great race, but they were cursed by the sterility which waits upon practicality. They were not dreamers enough to arrive at new points of view, which could give more fundamental control over the forces of nature. No Roman lost his life because he was absorbed in the contemplation of a mathematical diagram.
Figure 11
Fortunately, while details of Archimedes’ life are scarce, many (but not all) of his incredible writings have survived. Archimedes had a habit of sending notes on his mathematical discoveries to a few mathematician