WTUR, Rothkoid, you don't want to start accepting the anecdotal reports of later historians, esp. Dio. Sic, who was throwing together many different historical accounts to create a compendium history of the world, with a level of critical historical interpretation which is fiercely debated but ceratinly at times goes awry, or Athenaeus, whose deipnosophistae (the Philosophers at Dinner) is in itself a series of fragmentary anecdotes, in this case probably from similar nationalistic historians of Sicily (Timaeus and the other one whose name I can never remember), and not intended as a work of historical rigour. Otherwise we'll have to start accepting the whole Roman-soldier-bag-of-tools-thinks-its-gold-kills-Archimedes story as well, which has always smelled of hake to me. Unattributed invention tended to get attributed to Archimedes, like the various works and hymns attributed at various times to Homer.
However, we can probably be reasonably sure Dio. Sic. was right about his nationality - Syracuse was one of the larger cities in Sicily. Archimedes was (allegedly) killed when it was sacked by the Romans, although that sounds like a metaphor to me - qv Virgil, Aeneid 6 on the different destinies of Greece and Rome.
Of course, I'm not a historian, but I imagine the Egyptians probably invented it and the Greeks (or, if you'd prefer, Siceliots) nabbed the credit. That usually happens.
[ 01-10-2001: Message edited by: The Haus of Correction ] |
iodorus Siculus (c. first century BC), Bibliotheke, i.34.2