Archimedes and the Roman Imagination

3. Why Two Spheres?

chapter 3 WHY TWO SPHERES?
Cicero’s account of finding Archimedes’ tomb transforms the grave marker into a symbol of knowledge neglected and lost by its original owners, while the digression itself acts as an e xtended metaphor for the r ecovery and appropriation of that knowledge by a w orthier heir. Written late in C icero’s career and looking back to one of that career’s early landmarks, Tusculan Disputations 5.64–66 incorporates Archimedes, in his dual r ole as thinker and defender of the state, into Cicero’s intellectual and political autobiography. In addition, by recalling the reference to Archimedes’ sphere in the first book o the Tusculan Disputations, the grave marker helps unite the dialogue’s initial argument for the immor tality of the soul and its lat er claim that virtus suffi es for living happily. Finally, that Cicero makes so much of his memory of an event in Syracuse and does so within the greater discursive framework of the Roman appropriation of Greek culture points to the city’s significan e as a site both of his own inspiration and of disruptions in the continuity of even the most accomplished of cultures. As we have seen, the structure of this digression is a cr ucial part of the image it conveys, which is not of the tomb itself but of Cicero’s act of discovery . This structure links the image of discovery to other contexts external to the Tusculan Disputations, those of politics and memory, in which discovery also entails a r eturn to a point of departure. Cicero’s journey to the tomb links him to the one other Roman mentioned in connection with it, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, conquerer of Syracuse, who saw to Archimedes’ burial.1 In raising Archimedes’ spirit, then, Cicero summons up that of the philhel48 lenic Marcellus as well. As for memory, Cicero would not even have found the tomb had he not remembered the verses relating the relative volumes of sphere and cylinder. Of course, embedded narratives exclude as well as include : this passage shies away from referring directly to Archimedes’ death; it mentions neither the capture of Syracuse, nor the years of Roman rule that may have contributed to the t omb’s neglect. Even the r emembered Greek senarioli, unquoted, are lost to us. Cicero’s description of Archimedes’ tomb involves yet another return, to themes of the earlier De republica, where two spheres attributed to Archimedes —one solid, one orrery—serve as extended metaphors that make programmatic statements.2 The embedding of the spheres in the De republica is more complex than that of the tomb in the Tusculan Disputations, because the De republica is more truly a dialogue and br ings more voices into play.3 Yet, much as the tomb digression links the ideas of the Tusculan Disputations to Cicero’s life of politics and inquir y, so, too, the r epresentation of the spheres links major concerns of the De republica to Cicero’s personal experience .4 Cicero wrote the De republica in 54–51 BCE but chose to set it early in 129 BCE, shortly before its main figu e, Scipio Africanus, died in mysterious circumstances.5 Giving the dialogue a setting more than twenty years before his own birth meant that C icero could make autobiographical references only in the framing material, the prefaces addressed to his brother Quintus. Moreover, some of this material—indeed, much of the dialogue—is lost, a circumstance limiting what w e can sa y conclusively about the w ork as a whole.6 Still, we can see from what remains that Cicero’s discussion of the spheres places emphasis on memor y, discovery, and the t ransmission of knowledge; moreover, the manner in which the spheres are embedded in the De republica binds together their several frameworks—discursive, physical, social, and autobiographical—with the result, to paraphrase Emma Gee, that the organization of the narrative mirrors the design of the world.7 Here, as in the Tusculan Disputations, the way in which the exemplum is embedded also constitutes a crucial part of its message. The Setting of the Dialogue and the Description of the Spheres Early in the surviving fragment of book 1 and, in the dramatic setting of the dialogue, early on the first d y of the Latin Festival, before the participants in the discussion have assembled in ScipioAfricanus’s gardens, Scipio’s nephew, Quintus Tubero, asks his uncle about a...