Marcellus, though at a loss what to do, and not knowing how to oppose the machines of Archimedes, could not forbear, however, jesting upon them. “Shall we persist,” said he, to his workmen and engineers, “in making war with this Briareus of a geometrician, who treats my galleys and sambucæ so rudely? He infinitely exceeds the fabled giants with their hundred hands, in his perpetual and surprising discharge upon us.” Marcellus had reason for complaining of Archimedes alone; for the Syracusans were really no more than members of the engines and machines of that great geometrician, who was himself the soul of all their powers and operations. All other arms were unemployed; for the city at that time made use of none, either offensive or defensive, but those of Archimedes. Marcellus, at length observing the Romans to be so much intimidated, that if they saw upon the walls a small cord only or the least piece of wood, they would immediately fly, crying out that Archimedes was going to discharge some dreadful machine upon them, renounced his hopes of being able to make a breach in the walls, gave over his attacks, and turned the siege into a blockade. The Romans perceived that they had no other resource but to reduce the great number of people in the city by famine, and that they must stop every supply, both by sea and land. During the eight months in which they besieged the city, there was no kind of stratagem they did not invent, nor any act of valour they left untried, except, indeed, the assault, which they never ventured to attempt again. So much power has sometimes a single man, or a single science, when rightly applied. Deprive Syracuse of only one old man,--the great strength of the Roman arms must inevitably take the city: his sole presence checks and disconcerts all their designs. We here see what cannot be repeated too often,--how much interest princes have in protecting arts, favouring the learned, or encouraging science by honourable distinctions and actual rewards, which never ruin or impoverish a state. We say nothing in this place of the birth or nobility of Archimedes; he was not indebted to them for the happiness of his genius and profound knowledge; we consider him only as a learned man, and an excellent geometrician. What a loss would Syracuse have sustained, if, to have saved a small expense and pension, such a man had been abandoned to inaction and obscurity! Hiero was careful not to act in this manner. He knew all the value of our geometrician; and it is no vulgar merit in a prince to understand that of other men. He paid it due honour; he made it useful, and did not stay till occasion or necessity obliged him to do so: it would then have been too late. By a wise foresight, the true character of a great prince and a great minister, in the very arms of peace he provided all that was necessary for supporting a siege, and making war with success, though at that time there was no appearance of anything