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During the 3rd century BC, the Roman Republic repeatedly overcame several formidable adversaries. The aggressive North African city of Carthage, in particular, tested Roman might. The sons of Carthage were bold in strategy, clever in tactics and unrelenting in spirit. Indeed, Rome's victories over the Carthaginians may well represent the greatest achievement of an army that would go on to conquer the entire Mediterranean world. But there was one 3rd-century foe that no Roman ever defeated in fair battle. he was, in a way, Rome's unconquerable adversary during the second Punic War, although he was not himself a Carthaginian, nor even, for that matter, a soldier. He was a mathematician. And his name was Archimedes.
Archimedes' extraordinary struggle against a land and naval force was the sort of contest that could only have happened in antiquity. In those days, it was the nature of citizenship that men of every vocation felt a keen patriotism for their homelands. In wartime, playwrights stood alongside poets, politicians and farmers to defend their native cities. Women, too, contributed to defense, and there are accounts of besieged cities whose entire female populations were bald, the women having sacrificed their hair for the production of catapult springs. Still, the story of how an elderly mathematician was pitted against the legendary legions of Rome stands out even in the annals of ancient warfare. It is a tale of three cities. And although Rome and Carthage sometimes dominate the narrative, Archimedes' own Syracuse plays the leading role.
Founded around 734 BC by colonists from the Greek city of Corinth, Syracuse was first established on the isle of Ortygia, which lies between two small harbors along the southern coast of Sicily. Over time, the city outgrew tiny Ortygia and spread to a nearby coastal plain on the larger island. Syracuse thus straddled the water, with part of its population residing on the densely populated isle and the rest on Sicily itself.
By the early 5th century BC, Syracuse had grown to such an extent that it stood on the verge of becoming a great power in the Mediterranean. The city dominated much of Sicily and even fended off a major Carthaginian invasion of the island in 480 BC. About 100 years later, the Syracusan...