(Read the article on one page)
The
Romans were great admirers of the Greeks and their civilization. The
emperor Nero, for instance, was a Philhellene who travelled extensively
around Greece and even gave a huge tax-exemption to the province.
Another Roman emperor, Caracalla, was obsessed with Alexander the Great,
and sought to emulate his idol in many ways. These imitations, however,
were not very successful, and at times even comical. Another way that
Roman admiration for the Greeks could be expressed was through visiting
the tombs of famous Greeks. Incidentally, this tradition itself has its
precedence in the Greek custom of visiting the tombs of Homeric heroes.
One famous example of a Roman visiting a Greek tomb was that of the
Republican orator, Cicero. 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.
Cicero at the tomb of Archimedes. Source: BigStockPhoto
Archimedes was a mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and
astronomer, and is probably one of the most prominent scientific
thinkers of the ancient Greek world. 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. 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.
Portrait of Archimedes by Luis Figuier, 1881 ( Wikimedia Commons )
According to the available sources, Archimedes was born around 287
B.C. in the city of Syracuse, Sicily. At that time, the city was an
autonomous Greek colony of Magna Graecia. 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. Archimedes died around 212 B.C., a casualty of the
Second Punic War. This was a war fought between Rome and her rival in
the Mediterranean, Carthage, towards the end of the 3 rd century B.C. As Syracuse was an ally of the Carthaginians, it was besieged by the Romans, and finally fell after two years.
Archimedes directing the defenses of Syracuse by Thomas Ralph Spence, 1895 ( Wikimedia Commons )
According to Plutarch’s account, Archimedes was killed by a Roman
soldier when he declined to meet the victorious Roman general,
Marcellus. 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. Plutarch also mentions an
alternate version of the story, in which Archimedes was killed whilst
attempting to surrender to the Romans. 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. 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.
The Death of Archimedes by Thomas Degeorge, 1815 ( Wikimedia Commons )
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. According to the account, Cicero was in Sicily serving as a
quaestor. During his tenure there, he decided to visit the tomb of
Archimedes. The Syracusans, however, were unaware of this tomb, and
denied that it even existed. Cicero then decided to search for the tomb,
and managed to find it near the Agrigentine Gate. Cicero identified the
tomb based on some lines of verse he heard were inscribed on the
monument. The inscriptions stated that there was a stone cylinder and
sphere on the tomb, which enabled Cicero to locate Archimedes’ tomb.
Cicero and the magistrates discovering the tomb of Archimedes by Benjamin West, 1796 ( Wikimedia Commons )
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 . In fact, Cicero mentions
that his story about discovering Archimedes’ tomb was a digression from
the subject he was writing about. This subject was the promotion of the
pursuit of knowledge over material riches. Archimedes, as well as other
Greek thinkers such as Democritus, Pythagoras and Anaxagoras were
compared to tyrants, and Cicero declared that the lives of the former
were preferable to those of the latter. 
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου