INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

ARCHIMEDES.

A biography of Archimedes was written by one Heracleides*, but this work has not survived, and such details as are known must be gathered from many various sources†. According to Tzetzes‡, he died at the age of 75; and, as he perished in the sack of Syracuse (212 B.C.), it follows that he was likely born around 287 B.C. He was the son of Pheidias the astronomer§, and was on intimate terms with—if not related to—King Hieron and his son Gelon.

• Eutocius mentions this work in his commentary on Archimedes’ Measurement of the Circle: "as Heracleides says in the Life of Archimedes." He alludes to it again in his commentary on Apollonius’ Conics (ed. Heiberg, Vol. II, p. 168), where, however, the name is incorrectly given as Heracleios. This Heracleides is perhaps the same as the one mentioned by Archimedes himself in the preface to his book On Spirals.

† An exhaustive collection of the materials is given in Heiberg’s Quaestiones Archimedeae (1879). The preface to Torelli’s edition also provides the main points, and the same work (pp. 363—370) quotes at length most of the original references to Archimedes’ mechanical inventions. Further, the article "Archimedes" (by Hultsch) in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaften provides an excellent summary of all available information. See also Susemihl’s Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit original: "Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit" — History of Greek literature in the Alexandrian period., I, pp. 723—733.

‡ Tzetzes, Chiliad., II, 35, 105.

§ Pheidias is mentioned in the Sand-reckoner of Archimedes: "of the earlier astronomers Eudoxus... and Pheidias my father" (the last words being Blass’s correction for the reading in the text). Cf. Schol. Clark. in Gregor. Nazianz. Or. 34, p. 355 a Morel.: "Pheidias was by birth a Syracusan astronomer, the father of Archimedes."