INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
ARCHIMEDES.
A life of Archimedes was written by one Heracleides[1], but this biography has not survived, and such particulars as are known have to be collected from many various sources[2]. According to Tzetzes[3] he died at the age of 75, and, as he perished in the sack of Syracuse (B.C. 212), it follows that he was probably born about 287 B.C. He was the son of Pheidias the astronomer[4], and was on intimate terms with, if not related to, king Hieron and his
- ↑ Eutocius mentions this work in his commentary on Archimedes' Measurement of the circle, ὥς φησιν Ἡρακλείδες ἐν τῷ Ἀρχιμήδους βίῳ. He alludes to it again in his commentary on Apollonius' Conics (ed. Heiberg, Vol. ii. p. 168), where, however, the name is wrongly given as Ἡράκλειος. This Heracleides is perhaps the same as the Heracleides 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 gives the main points, and the same work (pp. 363—370) quotes at length most of the original references to the mechanical inventions of Archimedes. Further, the article Archimedes (by Hultsch) in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-Encyclopddie der classischen Altertumswissenschaften gives an entirely admirable summary of all the available information. See also Susemihl's Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, i. pp. 723—733.
- ↑ Tzetzes, Chiliad., ii. 35, 105.
- ↑ Pheidias is mentioned in the Sand-reckoner of Archimedes, τῶν προτέρων ἀστρολόγων Εὐδόξου…Φειδία δὲ τοῦ ἁμοῦ πατρὸς (the last words being the correction of Blass for τοῦ Ἀκούπατρος, the reading of the text). Cf. Schol. Clark, in Gregor. Nazianz. Or. 34, p. 355a Morel. Φειδίας τὸ μὲν γένος ἧν Συρακόσοις ἀστρολόγος ὁ Ἀρχιμήδους πατήρ
