demonstrations by enforced reasons and proofs. As that conclusion
which instructeth one to search out two lines mean proportional,
which cannot be proved by reason demonstrative, and yet
notwithstanding is a principle and an accepted ground for many
things which are contained in the art of portraiture. Both of
them have fashioned it to the workmanship of certain instruments,
called mesolabes or mesographs, which serve to find these mean
lines proportional, by drawing certain curve lines, and
overthwart and oblique sections. But after that Plato was
offended with them, and maintained against them, that they did
utterly corrupt and disgrace, the worthiness and excellence of
geometry, making it to descend from things not comprehensible and
without body, unto things sensible and material, and to bring it
to a palpable substance, where the vile and base handiwork of man
is to be employed: since that time, I say, handicraft, or the art
of engines, came to be separated from geometry, and being long
time despised by the philosophers, it came to be one of the
warlike arts.

"But Archimedes having told King Hiero, his kinsman and friend,
that it was possible to remove as great a weight as he would,
with as little strength as he listed to put to it: and boasting
himself thus (as they report of him) and trusting to the force of
his reasons, wherewith he proved this conclusion, that if there
were another globe of earth, he was able to remove this of ours,
and pass it over to the other: King Hiero wondering to hear him,
required him to put his device in execution, and to make him see
by experience, some great or heavy weight removed, by little
force. So Archimedes caught hold with a book of one of the
greatest carects, or hulks of the king (that to draw it to the
shore out of the water required a marvellous number of people to
go about it, and was hardly to be done so) and put a great number
of men more into her, than her ordinary burden: and he himself
sitting alone at his ease far off, without any straining at all,
drawing the end of an engine with many wheels and pulleys, fair
and softly with his hand, made it come as gently and smoothly to
him, as it had floated in the sea. The king wondering to see the
sight, and knowing by proof the greatness of his art; be prayed
him to make him some engines, both to assault and defend, in all
manner of sieges and assaults. So Archimedes made him many
engines, but King Hiero never occupied any of them, because he
reigned the most part of his time in peace without any wars. But
this provision and munition of engines, served the Syracusan's
turn marvellously at that time: and not only the provision of the
engines ready made, but also the engineer and work-master
himself, that had invented them.

"Now the Syracusans, seeing themselves assaulted by the Romans,
both by sea and by land, were marvellously perplexed, and could
not tell what to say, they were so afraid: imagining it was
impossible for them to withstand so great an army. But when
Archimedes fell to handling his engines, and to set them at
liberty, there flew in the air infinite kinds of shot, and
marvellous great stones, with an incredible noise and force on
the sudden, upon the footmen that came to assault the city by
land, bearing down, and tearing in pieces all those which came
against them, or in what place soever they lighted, no earthly
body being able to resist the violence of so heavy a weight: so
that all their ranks were marvellously disordered. And as for the
galleys that gave assault by sea, some were sunk with long pieces
of timber like unto the yards of ships, whereto they fasten their
sails, which were suddenly blown over the walls with force of
their engines into their galleys, and so sunk them by their over
great weight."


Polybius describes what was perhaps the most important of these
contrivances, which was, he tells us, "a band of iron, hanging by
a chain from the beak of a machine, which was used in the
following manner. The person who, like a pilot, guided the beak,
having let fall the hand, and catched hold of the prow of any
vessel, drew down the opposite end of the machine that was on the
inside of the walls. And when the vessel was thus raised erect
upon its stem, the machine itself was held immovable; but, the
chain being suddenly loosened from the beak by the means of
pulleys, some of the vessels were thrown upon their sides, others
turned with the bottom upwards; and the greatest part, as the
prows were plunged from a considerable height into the sea, were
filled with water, and all that were on board thrown into tumult
and disorder.

"Marcellus was in no small degree embarrassed," Polybius
continues, "when he found himself encountered in every attempt by
such resistance. He perceived that all his efforts were defeated
with loss; and were even derided by the enemy. But, amidst all
the anxiety that he suffered, he could not help jesting upon the
inventions of Archimedes. This man, said he, employs our ships as
buckets to draw water: and boxing about our sackbuts, as if they
were unworthy to be associated with him, drives them from his
company with disgrace. Such was the success of the siege on the
side of the sea."

Subsequently, however, Marcellus took the city by strategy, and
Archimedes was killed, contrary, it is said, to the express
orders of Marcellus. "Syracuse being taken," says Plutarch,
"nothing grieved Marcellus more than the loss of Archimedes. Who,
being in his study when the city was taken, busily seeking out by
himself the demonstration of some geometrical proposition which
he had drawn in figure, and so earnestly occupied therein, as he
neither saw nor heard any noise of enemies that ran up and down


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