LXI. The artifice, by which we are told Archimedes burnt the Roman ships, which, under the command of Marcellus, were employed in the siege of Syracuse, has been plausibly represented by historians; and has exercised the ingenuity of not a few _mathematicians_, to find out how this could have been effected. It is said, Archimedes did it by concentrating the rays of the sun in the focus of a large burning glass, and reflecting them on the ships. I judge, that this narration, although so much vulgarized in authors, is fabulous; and my reason for being of this opinion is, that none of the antients who treat of the siege of Syracuse relate any such circumstance; nor does there appear the least mention of the burning-glasses of Archimedes, either in Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, Florus, Pliny, or Valerius Maximus: and it is very remarkable, that the three first of these authors, treat very largely and particularly of the machinations and contrivances which Archimedes made use of to destroy the Roman ships. How then is it credible, that they should all have been silent about the effect of the burning-glasses, if there had been any such things used? The first author in whom we meet with this information is Galen; to whose testimony, besides his not being a historian by profession, and having wrote four hundred years after the siege of Syracuse, may be made another objection; which is, that he does not assert the thing positively, but only speaks of it in the general terms of its being so said.