The Works of Archimedes

Marcellus, he refused to do so until he had finished his problem with a demonstration. The soldier was so enraged that he drew his sword and killed him. Others say that the Roman ran up to him with a drawn sword, offering to kill him; when Archimedes saw him, he begged him earnestly to wait a short time so that he would not leave his problem incomplete and unsolved, but the soldier took no notice and killed him. Again, there is a third account to the effect that, as he was carrying some of his mathematical instruments—sundials, spheres, and angles adjusted to the apparent size of the sun—to Marcellus, some soldiers met him. Believing he carried gold in his vessel, they killed him. original: "Plutarch, Marcellus, 19." The most picturesque version of the story is perhaps the one that represents him saying to a Roman soldier who came too close, "Stand away, fellow, from my diagram," at which the man was so enraged that he killed him. original: "Tzetzes, Chil. II. 35, 135; Zonaras IX. 5." The addition made to this story by Zonaras, representing him as saying original: "παρὰ κεφαλὰν καὶ μὴ παρὰ γραμμάν" — "Mind my head, but not my diagram!", while it no doubt recalls the second version given by Plutarch, is perhaps the most far-fetched of the touches added to the picture by later hands.

Archimedes is said to have requested his friends and relatives to place upon his tomb a representation of a cylinder enclosing a sphere, together with an inscription giving the ratio that the cylinder bears to the sphere; original: "Plutarch, Marcellus, 17 ad fin." from which we may infer that he himself regarded the discovery of this ratio On the Sphere and Cylinder, i. 33, 34 as his greatest achievement. Cicero, when serving as quaestor in Sicily, found the tomb in a neglected state and restored it. original: "Cicero, Tusc. v. 64 sq."

Beyond these particulars of the life of Archimedes, we have nothing left except a number of stories which, though perhaps not literally accurate, help us to a conception of the personality of the most original mathematician of antiquity—a personality we would not willingly alter. Thus, to illustrate his entire preoccupation with abstract studies, we are told that he would forget all about his food and other necessities of life, and would be found drawing geometrical figures in the ashes of the fire or, when