Culture
Death of Archimedes
This episode explores the circumstances surrounding the death of Archimedes during the Roman invasion of Syracuse. Through a critical examination of historical accounts, we delve into the complexities...
Death of Archimedes
Culture •
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Are comedies died mouthing back at an enemy soldier?
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Don't disturb my circles.
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Or that's how the story goes.
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Is it fact or fiction?
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We have third hand accounts at best.
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So there's plenty of room for doubt.
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Nevertheless, I'm putting my money on fact.
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I think the standard story, anecdote that is retold by many historians, it does make sense.
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It works psychologically with what little we know about Archimedes as a person, and it fits contextually with what we know about Archimedes era and circumstances.
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So let's investigate this.
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Let's use the death of Archimedes to reflect on these broader themes.
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Archimedes was killed when the Romans invaded his city, Syracuse.
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There's little doubt about that part, but the precise details are a bit less clear.
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There are various versions of the story from several different ancient authors.
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These passages you can find them all at the Archimedes website by Chris Rores, which I highly recommend.
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Very useful website.
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Let's quote the standard version of the death of Archimedes as told by Plutarch.
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It goes like this.
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Archimedes was working out some problem by a diagram and having fixed his mind and his eyes alike upon the subject of his speculation,
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he never noticed the incursion of the Romans nor the city was taken.
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In this transport of study and contemplation, the soldier unexpectedly coming up to him commanded him to follow.
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Archimedes declined to do so before he had worked at this problem to a demonstration.
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The soldier and raged, drew his sword and ran him through.
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That's the story of Archimedes death as told by Plutarch.
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Nowadays it's quite popular for historians to cast doubt on the story of Archimedes death.
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One example is the recent biography Archimedes' full-chrome of science by Nicolas Nikastro.
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This biography argues that the standard story doesn't pass the smell test to use Nikastro's words.
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Because he argues any properly self-interested soldier would know the reward for capturing Archimedes.
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So, yes indeed Archimedes was famous and the Roman commander wanted him to capture the life.
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It is sad. So therefore the idea that the soldier recognizes Archimedes but simply liquidates a valuable prisoner
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indeed one who amounted to a strategic asset for Rome simply because if it was lexed asical and responding to orders
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doesn't pass the smell test according to Nikastro's biography.
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So I'm not so sure about that.
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We know about police brutality for one thing.
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We know for example that George Floyd was killed by police while being apprehended after being suspected of using a counterfeit $20 bill.
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That was on an ordinary Monday in a peaceful prosperous country.
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The soldier who killed Archimedes was not having a normal Monday dealing with petty delinquents.
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This soldier was in any materiatory in an active war zone.
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You would think that his soldier would be on high alert against ambushes, sudden movements and rightly so.
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And let's consider what the soldier's opinion of Archimedes would have been.
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Archimedes was well known. He famously led the military engineering efforts, the fended of the Romans for years.
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What would the soldier think of the figurehead of the enemy?
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Would the soldier believe that such a great geometry must be spared for the greater good?
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Or would he think that Archimedes was a terrorist responsible for the deaths of his friends?
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This soldier may very well have seen firsthand the death and suffering inflicted by Archimedes by his famous warfare machines.
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Maybe for example a friend of his drowned when Archimedes sunk a Roman ship during one of the previous invasion attempts.
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Or maybe this soldier's brother for example had his legs crushed by one of Archimedes catapults and returned home as a cripple.
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And maybe that made such an impression on this younger brother that an unstoppable hatred festered in him and he swore to dedicate his life to revenge against this evil Greek insurgent.
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Indeed, maybe on this very day, the day that this soldier came to stand before Archimedes, maybe this very day this soldier has already had to watch helplessly as a close friend or a brother in arms died gruesome death.
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Such things can happen in war and this is war.
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So therefore I don't think we can say the soldier wouldn't have killed Archimedes because he has ordered not to and rationally speaking he would have been his best interest to obey those orders.
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This soldier may very well have been under immense and acute psychological pressure and trauma at this moment when he happened to come face to face with the very symbol of everything that he had been told to hate.
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That's what I think about this so-called smell test.
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But that's the soldier psychology. Now let's consider it from Archimedes point of view.
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Would Archimedes become a collected and compliant when a soldier comes to arrest him? No, he would not.
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The invasion is even more traumatic for Archimedes. Archimedes was born in Syracuse. He spent his life there.
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There's every reason to think that these routes meant a lot to Archimedes. Archimedes was famous already in his lifetime.
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No doubt he had generous offers to go elsewhere like superstar academics today. Archimedes stayed in his hometown.
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Archimedes wrote his treatises in the local dialect of Greek instead of adapting to the more prestigious version of Greeks spoken in Athens or Alexandria.
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Perhaps again another sign of local pride. Archimedes also mentions his father who was apparently an astronomer.
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So that's another sign that Archimedes attached some importance to his heritage. And of course Archimedes was heavily involved in the defense of the city as a military engineer for many years.
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Obviously that is another sign of considerable patriotism. And now all of that is being destroyed.
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Archimedes birthplace his home for his entire life burnt and ransacked by a heartless military force.
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If Archimedes looks out his window, all he sees is everyone he ever loved being slaughtered and generations of cultural heritage being sadistically trampled to dust by soldiers' boots.
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This would be heartbreak and trauma enough. But it's worse. It's worse for Archimedes because he was in charge of the defense.
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It's his fault. All this blood is on his hands or so it would seem to him. Archimedes was given every resource to orchestrate the Syracuse in defense.
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All those notorious warfare machines that held the Romans at bay for so long, that's not something you throw together in your basement.
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Archimedes must have been entrusted with massive resources. He must have had considerable manpower under his command.
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In other words, his friends and brothers have put their faith in him in their hour of need and he failed. Archimedes has let them all down.
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He has let his father down. He has let his forefathers down.
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Not only is Archimedes watching his city burn, he is also overcome by the crushing guilt that this is all because of his personal failure.
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How do you think this guy is going to react when an enemy soldier comes to take him away? He's not in a mood to be ready to be Miranda right Cizzi.
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It was time for Archimedes to go. Shot down on the pavement. It was the only honorable option left.
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Most of the historical accounts frame the death of Archimedes in terms of the trope of the absent-minded professor, lost in a diagram of oblivious to the world around him.
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I imagine that this is a sanitized account. Most of the historical accounts were written under Roman rule.
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Maybe the real events were quite a bit uglier, a lot less flattering for Roman historians to repeat.
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Maybe Archimedes was not cartoonously lost in geometrical thought at that moment as the story tells him to pretend.
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Maybe he knew full well what was going on like any normal person would, especially since he was obviously very well aware of the prospect of Roman military invasion and he would understand very well what it meant when Roman soldiers had reached his house.
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Archimedes was an experienced military engineer who had lived under the immediate threat of military attack for years.
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Is it too much to imagine that such a person would carry a weapon, maybe a small dagger?
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Well, now is the time to use it, if not now then when?
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Of course, by the time it comes to that then you have already lost. You don't have a dagger because you think you will be able to fight your way out.
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You carry the dagger because when the time comes to use it your choices are die on your knees or take one **** down with you.
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Anyway, that's how I would write Archimedes' The Gritty Reboot.
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It makes narrative sense and dramatic sense. If this is what happened then Roman historians would hardly want to admit so.
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It doesn't do their self-image any favors that the great Archimedes would rather die than be taken alive by Romans.
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So the literary cliché of a philosopher so absurd in thought that he doesn't notice his surroundings, that is a welcome euphemism readily at hand.
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I quoted earlier the standard story from Plutarch, it leans very heavily into this cliché.
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Actually, Plutarch also goes on to give two other versions of the death of Archimedes. Others write, he says, and then he goes on to tell other versions.
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For instance, that Archimedes was killed because a soldier mistook his astronomical instrument for gold trinkets and he killed him to plunder his valuables.
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I don't think that's what happened, but even this version clearly has some elements of truth.
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Indeed, there was plundering by the soldiers, some flashy-looking astronomical instruments made by Archimedes.
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We're indeed stolen by the Romans and put on public display in Rome.
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So people would have known that and that would have given some credibility to the story.
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Plutarch maybe he's even relieved that there is some ambiguity regarding the death of Archimedes.
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Maybe in fact he knew very well that his alternative stories are not true.
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Indeed, he first tells the standard story, the one about the soldier and the absent-minded Archimedes, busy with geometry.
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He tells that version as if it was an unequivocal fact without any qualifications.
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And then he adds others write when he's telling these other versions, which are guarding himself, setting himself, using these formulations as if he knew that they were false almost.
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Maybe since the real version was so embarrassing for the Romans, muddying the waters this way with some misleading alternatives, that's a convenient way to trick the reader into thinking,
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oh well, nobody really knows for sure what happened.
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There were little fake news in there to dilute the facts.
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It's very much possible that the circumstances of Archimedes' death were very well known.
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They were well documented at the time and perhaps for generations afterwards.
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It is reported that a personal friend of Archimedes wrote a biography, which is now lost, but which could very well have been an excellent and reliable source, available for some times in good libraries.
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Another credible source is the Greek historian Polybius.
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Polybius writes about Archimedes' military machines.
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That's part of his texts still exists. He doesn't mention the death of Archimedes in those surviving texts, but certain parts of his works have been lost.
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Perhaps very conveniently for the Romans, perhaps that very part about the death of Archimedes, Polybius was writing not very long after the fact.
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Polybius himself could personally have spoken to eyewitnesses who were actually there on the ground during the siege of Syracuse.
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So it's possible that there were decent sources. We shouldn't say, oh it's all just a bunch of legends and made up hundreds of years later, they were good sources.
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There were good documentation, serious historians who tried to keep a record of these things. We should not be so pessimistic.
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The existence of these better sources may have acted as a deterrent on historians like Plutarch and Livy and these people whose works we do have still to this day.
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These historians, they mentioned the death of Archimedes in passing. Their main concern is not to preserve a maximally accurate record of exactly what happened to Archimedes.
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They retell the story because it suits its purposes, because it's a vivid and gripping story as well as an occasion to make a moral point.
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And they are probably not opposed to tweaking the story to suit those ends.
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Nevertheless, these historians too, if storytellers like Plutarch, they wouldn't want to be caught saying something that is proven before.
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The possibility that some readers may have had access to quite reliable historical accounts in other sources, that could very well have been a check on the freedom that these other writers could afford to allow themselves.
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Presumably, they also had some professional integrity. Sometimes I wonder about the modern historians who are so quick to dismiss ancient writers as if we're just writing fictions and legends and made up whatever the thought sounded cool.
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I wonder what it says about our modern colleagues, that they find that that kind of behavior from a history writer that's perfectly plausible and perfectly in character. Well, makes you think, doesn't it?
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So these are third-hand accounts, fourth-hand accounts, of course they are distorted. Of course we should be mindful what are the layers of biases that hidden agenda that these retellings have been subjected to.
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Nevertheless, that is very different from just making stuff up out of thin air.
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Scholarly norms back then for history writing were obviously very different. Historians were expected to be storytellers with flair, not academic boards like today.
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So history writers back then, they would allow themselves more literally leeway, they allowed themselves to add stylistic embellishments.
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But the game was to do that while remaining faithful to the basic facts. For example, according to one modern analysis, one version of the story of the death of Archimedes elegantly frames it in terms of concentric circles.
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First, the walls of the city are breached, then the soldier breaks into Archimedes house, and then finally as a last layer of concentric fortifications, Archimedes wraps his arms around his precious diagram.
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So this theme of geometry is echoed in the narrative structure itself, that's exquisite stuff. Things like that are fun to play with as a writer.
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That's the kind of embellishment that you can add without doing any harm to the essence of the historical facts themselves.
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Here's another, in my opinion, misguided objection to the historical reliability of the story of Archimedes death.
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I quote from the MEA press book, Archimedes what did he do besides cry Ureca, the title of the book, regarding Archimedes last works, this book writes.
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Who would have reported Archimedes last works, with a soldier who had killed Archimedes against order of his commanding general, offered this incriminating evidence?
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Well, yes, yes he would. The Roman army routinely tortured enemies for information, the soldier who surely know that very well perhaps first hand.
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This is the same Roman army who have given us the word to decimate, that is to say in case of disobedience to kill one in every ten of your own soldiers just to make a point to maintain discipline.
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Obviously, the soldier is at the mercy of the army. They know where he lives, they know where his family lives. Of course they can easily apply any amount of pressure. Of course the soldier will talk, how could he not?
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Besides, the soldier would not have been alone with him. I would think that when clearing enemy territory and active battlefield, soldiers would presumably prefer to stick together in groups rather than wander off on their own.
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So why wouldn't the other soldiers report what happened? Of course they would.
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Of course that doesn't mean that the reported last works of Archimedes are historically accurate naturally. I don't think they are.
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Indeed the sources don't agree what those words were. Anyway, the ones who tried to put some words into Archimedes mouth, they all have different versions.
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But the problem is not that it would have been not knowable or that actual facts were not available to historical writers. Things like last words, those are precisely the kinds of things where an ancient history writer will embellish a little bit for style and flair and drama and narrative when writing their own as it were reboot of this established story.
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Nevertheless, they were not fiction writers. Their literary freedom was checked by professional integrity.
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Nor was there necessarily any language barrier from preventing Archimedes and the soldier from understanding one another.
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If we assume that the soldier was Latin speaking, before it came to war, these regions had been closed partners in diplomacy and trade.
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People may have known quite a bit of each other's language. Archimedes, this is Cedar Cuses located in Sicily, right next door to mainland Italy.
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They were had closed ties. Archimedes was highly educated. He was part of the King's entourage as it were. He may very well have been able to express himself in Latin.
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In any case, the orders were supposedly to capture Archimedes alive. That's what the Romans wanted. What did Archimedes want? Did Archimedes want to be paraded around the Rome like a trophy of war?
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So that tipsy dinner party guests couldn't make fun of the freak with the big brain? Or did Archimedes want to sell his engineering skills and his warfare know how to his mortal enemies while the bodies of his childhood friends and neighbors were still warm?
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I don't think so. I think Archimedes would rather spit the soldier in the face and die a martyr's death.
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Not unlike Socrates 200 years earlier, as Archimedes would have been well aware, Socrates basically chose death. Socrates was sentenced for corrupting the minds of young people with dangerous ideas.
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But Socrates's death sentence could easily have been avoided. It seems. First the trial itself, the democratic jury trial, it had the possibility of bargaining built in. Socrates could have proposed a realistic alternative to the death penalty as a compromise, which could very well have worked.
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But he refused to do so as a matter of principle. Then even after being sentenced, Socrates still had the chance to escape. He had rich friends. Some of them could have pulled some strings.
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Some of the things made some bribes. Probably Socrates could have been able to escape. So he would have had to leave Athens, start over a couple of islands down. Nevertheless he would be alive.
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Socrates wanted to make a point instead. And it worked. Maybe if he had let the Athenians boss him around, then that would only have been bold in this mob to go after the next guy in the same way.
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Instead Socrates died to the shame of Athens. Right after this, Plato and Aristotle thrived in Athens for many decades. Perhaps not a little thanks to Socrates' sacrifice and moral victory in death.
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In a better world, Archimedes' death could have had much the same effect. After Socrates' death, the Athenians had enough moral backbone to realize that they had screwed up and they got their act together.
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No such luck for Archimedes. The Romans were unfortunately beyond redemption. Even Archimedes' martyr death was not enough to stem the greed and cruelty of these militaristic imperialists. Unfortunately we know that now after the fact Archimedes could not have known that Archimedes could very reasonably have felt that dying like a man of principle and honor was the only remaining gift that he could give his countrymen.
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Now let's look at the Romans. There's the invading general, Marcellus. The sources would have us believe that this noble general, Marcellus, he was ever so concerned that Archimedes should not be harmed and after this unfortunate death Marcellus paid his respects to Archimedes surviving relatives, etc., etc. blah blah blah.
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Now you can decide for yourself how much of this transparent propaganda you want to believe. To me it sounds more like a slimy politicians talking points at the stage photo op.
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Even propaganda carries some information though. In this case we see what the Romans actually cared about. They were very preoccupied with honor.
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They go to great lengths to explain how Marcellus actions were so honorable, so noble, which should recall this was still good Rome, so to speak Republican Rome, the Democratic Rome. They still had some integrity in their own way. Before long it was to get a lot worse.
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One of the Emperor's didn't even need to pretend to be honorable anymore. Anyway, the Romans they cared about honor but they didn't care about science. Archimedes died working out some theorem. What theorem? Well nobody could care less among these Roman writers.
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Marcellus stole some of Archimedes instruments, planetaria and spheres, moral representations of the universe. Archimedes planetarium perhaps had used intricate combinations of cogwheel to represent the motions of the planet in a mechanical way.
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These instruments don't exist anymore. Of course, no scientific instruments from that era did not survive the centuries. But the written sources, they speak in some detail about this about how Marcellus brought back these Archimede devices to Rome.
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Of course, the Romans didn't know what to do with the scientific instruments. They didn't have any scientific tradition. They had no academy, no museum, no library that could do anything with these Archimede masterpieces.
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Marcellus just kept one of them at home in his living room, just like a hunting turf stuffed animal head. What a disgrace. And another one of these models, they put them in the temple of virtues in Rome. Just stuck this valuable scientific device in a Sunday church so the plebs could go out at it because no one in Rome had the competence to do anything better with it.
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That's what happened with important scientific artifacts in this barbaric culture. Then there is Cicero, another Roman, another one of these pseudo-intellectuals. Cicero was a career politician. His first appointment was in Provincial Sicily, Archimedes home. That was 137 years after Archimedes death. When this formerly Greek-speaking territory had been absorbed by the Romans at that time during the conquest.
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Cicero bragged that I managed to track down Archimedes grave. The Ciceroacusans know nothing about it in Cicero's own words. Yes, the world savages you'll see. Cicero, the white savior, is here to singlehandedly rescue mankind's cultural heritage according to himself.
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Cicero claims that Archimedes tomb was completely surrounded and hidden by bushes and brambles and thorns. And when he discovered it, I immediately said to the Ciceroacusans some of whose leading citizens were with me at the time that I believe that this was the very object I have been looking for.
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Men were sent in with sickles to clear the site and when a path to the monument had been opened we walked right up to it. Right, so as you can see, Ciceroac could hardly contain himself when he found Archimedes grave.
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He was so excited that he immediately went and sat down in a shaded area and he had some chilled wine with his very important friends clearing a path to the grave. That was a top priority.
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You know, they only kept like two or three slaves at most to fend them with palm leaves while they waited for the other slaves to cut the path to the tomb.
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My God.
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You know Archimedes saying, give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth. If he was Cicero, the saying would go, give me a place to sit and I shall order some slaves to move the earth.
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Oh, by the way, did I mention that my friends happen to be very important dignitaries you see?
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Oh my God. But Cicero, he's not done yet. Apparently he thought that he's bragging up to this point. It was too subtle for your dimwits you see, because now he's going to spell it out for you.
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Here's what he says. So one of the most famous cities in the Greek world, an informer, days a great center of learning, would every main in total ignorance of the tomb of the most brilliant citizens ever produced had I not come and pointed it out.
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That was his words. The great Cicero, supposedly a master of rhetoric and style, he apparently found that the very obvious moral of the story would have been too obscure without him simply stating directly that he was saving people from total ignorance.
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In his words, apparently that's what passes for a great orator in his lousy age. Not only is he telling a story blatantly designed for self-grandisement, but then as if that was not enough, he just turns and looks directly into the camera and just flat out brags explicitly.
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What an absolute windbag.
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Well, I am in good company with these condemnations I have discovered. Let me quote from the great Highberg.
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You and Ludwig Highberg, the great classical scholar, published definitive editions of the works of Archimedes and Euclid and so on more than a hundred years ago, a legend in the field.
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Like me, Highberg laments the harm done to science by what he calls the cold breath of Rome. And he has some choice words for Cicero in particular. And here's what he writes.
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The Romans with their narrowed rustic horizon had always in their heart of hearts that mixture of suspicion and contempt for pure science, which is still the mark of the half educated and they sometimes brag of it.
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Cicero, the Archdilatant, both that is countrymen, God be thanked are not as these Greeks are but restrict the study of mathematics to what is useful and practically applicable.
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So those are Highberg's words about Cicero, the Archdilatant by contrasts Highberg's full of enthusiasm for the Ionia school in the full lace of its glory as he writes when scholars breathe a spirit of exact critical keen observation and attack charlatans, speculative theories with the vigorous and often fiercely sarcastic polemic.
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This is what Highberg sees as the good old days, you know, love it. One long to recover something of that robust Ionian criticism says Highberg.
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Yes, couldn't agree more. Let's bring it back indeed, sarcastic polemic and all, then Archimedes will not have died in vain. Thank you.