Archimedes died, as he had lived, absorbed in mathematical
contemplation. The accounts of the circumstances of his death differ in
some details. Plutarch gives more than one version in the following
passage: "Marcellus was most of all afflicted at the death of
Archimedes, for, as fate would have it, he was intent on working out
some problem with a diagram, and, his mind and his eyes being alike
fixed on his investigation, he never noticed the incursion of the Romans
nor the capture of the city. And when a soldier came up to him suddenly
and bade him follow to Marcellus, he refused to do so until he had
worked out his problem to a demonstration; whereat the soldier was so
enraged that he drew his sword and slew him. Others say that the Roman
ran up to him with a drawn sword, threatening to kill him; and, when
Archimedes saw him, he begged him earnestly to wait a little while in
order that he might not leave his problem incomplete and unsolved, but
the other took no notice and killed him. Again, there is a third account
to the effect that, as he was carrying to Marcellus some of his
mathematical instruments, sundials, spheres, and angles adjusted to the
apparent size of the sun to the sight, some soldiers met him and, being
under the impression that he carried gold in the vessel, killed him."
The most picturesque version of the story is that which represents him
as saying to a Roman soldier who came too close, "Stand away, fellow,
from my diagram," whereat the man was so enraged that he killed him.
Archimedes is said to have requested his friends and relatives to place
upon his tomb a representation of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere
within it, together with an inscription giving the ratio (3/2) which the
cylinder bears to the sphere; from which we may infer that he himself
regarded the discovery of this ratio as his greatest achievement.
Cicero, when quaestor in Sicily, found the tomb in a neglected state and
restored it. In modern times not the slightest trace of it has been
found.
Beyond the above particulars of the life of Archimedes, we have nothing
but a number of stories which, if perhaps not literally accurate, yet
help us to a conception of the personality of the man which we would not
willingly have altered. Thus, in illustration of his entire
preoccupation by his abstract studies, we are told that he would forget
all about his food and such necessities of life, and would be drawing
geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire, or, when anointing
himself, in the oil on his body. Of the same kind is the story mentioned
above, that, having discovered while in a bath the solution of the
question referred to him by Hieron as to whether a certain crown
supposed to have been made of gold did not in fact contain a certain
proportion of silver, he ran naked through the street to his home
shouting [Greek: eureka, eureka].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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