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10. The "Myth" of Archimedes, Yesterday and Today
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85 THE “MYTH” OF ARCHIMEDES, YESTERDAY AND TODAY X Even during Archimedes’ own lifetime a series of pleasant but (at least partly) fanciful anecdotes were told about him. As we saw in chapter 1, some of these have been transmitted to us by Plutarch. According to that Greek biographer, a Siren who accompanied Archimedes at all times put him under a spell, because of which he frequently forgot to eat or to attend to his other physical needs. According to this obviously embellished account, the scientist’s friends had to force him to bathe, while Archimedes simply continued to draw geometric figures on his own dirty body (Life of Marcellus 17; cf. plate 2). In his succinct and admirable study, the nineteenthcentury Italian mathematician Antonio Favaro affirmed that Archimedes’ preeminence “touched on the boundaries of legend.”1 It is no surprise that the possessor of such talent became virtually a legend throughout history from antiquity to the Renaissance. He remains such in the present day and no doubt will continue to hold such prominence in the future. 86 THE GREAT ARCHIMEDES X An example of his fame, as we saw earlier, can be found in the account of the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who went so far as to apologize for the killing of Archimedes, even building him a tomb adorned with a sphere in a cylinder, reflecting the name of Archimedes’ work entitled On the Sphere and the Cylinder. Cicero makes a particular reference to it when, a century and a half later, he speaks about how he had made a small survey and archaeological discovery [plate 15]: When I was quaestor [75 BC], I discovered his tomb, completely surrounded and covered with brambles and branches, of the existence of which the Syracusans had been ignorant in as much as they denied entirely that it even existed. I recalled certain trifling six-measure verses, which I had once learned were inscribed upon his tomb, declaring that a sphere with a cylinder was placed on top of the tomb. Moreover, as I was looking around one day at all the tombs—as outside of the Agrigentine gate there is a large number of tombs—I spied a small column that was not protruding very far from the bushes, on which there stood the image of a sphere and a cylinder. Immediately I told the Syracusans (the most notable citizens were with me) that I thought it was exactly what I was looking for. Slaves with sickles were sent out to clear away obstructions from the place, offering open access to the spot. We approached the front side of the pedestal: we saw an inscription with just about half the lines visible; for which the verses were corroded at each end. So one of the most famous cities of Magna Graecia , which had at one time even been the most learned, would have been ignorant of the existence of the tomb of her most brilliant citizen, unless a man from Arpinum had made it known to them. [Tusculan Disputations 5.64–66] [3.235.199.19] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:10 GMT) THE “MYTH” OF ARCHIMEDES, YESTERDAY AND TODAY 87 X The fame of Archimedes grew throughout antiquity, manifesting itself frequently in Latin poetry, as we saw in the previous chapter. This reputation was advanced, also, throughout the medieval period. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus testifies that Boethius had translated some of his treatises, but no fragments from these can be accurately strung together. Later, in the ninth century, Arabic writers translated some of Archimedes’ works, and his reputation waxed so great in Islamic culture that several spurious works were published under his name.2 In the Greek Middle Ages, particularly in the twelfth century, the first testimonies of widespread references to his On Burning Mirrors appear. In this treatise Archimedes demonstrated how sunlight can be focused on one point so as to create fire. This long-distance defensive weapon was employed in the defense of Syracuse when hostile Roman ships were approaching at a great distance (see above, chap. 8). In the West, during the middle of the thirteenth century , the Dominican Friar William of Moerbeke completed his translation of most of the corpus of Archimedes from Greek into Latin. This translation was housed in the papal library of Viterbo, though various leaflets of Archimedes had already previously appeared in the Western translations from Arabic. Indeed, Gerard of Cremona in Toledo, Spain, had so rendered the Measurement...