Archimedes’s emblematic death makes sense psychologically and embodies a rich historical picture in a single scene.

Transcript

Archimedes died mouthing back at an enemy soldier: “Don’t disturb my circles.”

Or that’s how the story goes. Is this fact or fiction? We have third-hand accounts at best so there is plenty of room for doubt. But I’m putting my money on fact nonetheless. I think this standard story makes sense. I think it works psychologically with what little we know about Archimedes as a person, and I think it fits contextually with what we know about Archimedes’s era and circumstances. So let’s investigate this, and let’s use the death of Archimedes to reflect on these broader themes.

Archimedes was killed when the Romans invaded his city, Syracuse. There is little doubt about that. The precise details are less clear. There are various versions of the story from several ancient authors. These passages are all conveniently collected at the Archimedes website by Chris Rorres, which I highly recommend.

Let’s quote the standard version from Plutarch: “Archimedes was working out some problem by a diagram, and having fixed his mind and his eyes alike upon the subject of his speculation, he never noticed the incursion of the Romans, nor that the city was taken. In this transport of study and contemplation, a soldier, unexpectedly coming up to him, commanded him to follow him. Archimedes declined to do so before he had worked out his problem to a demonstration. The soldier, enraged, drew his sword and ran him through.”

It is quite popular to cast doubt on the story of Archimedes’s death. One example is the recent biography “Archimedes: Fulcrum of Science” by Nicholas Nicastro (pages 43-44). This biography argues that the standard story “doesn’t pass the smell test” to use Nicastro’s words. Because “any properly self-interested soldier would know the reward for capturing Archimedes.” Indeed, Archimedes was famous and the Roman commander wanted him captured alive, it is said.

So the idea that “the soldier recognizes Archimedes but simply liquidates a valuable prisoner – indeed one who amounted to a strategic asset for Rome – simply because he was lackadaisical in responding to orders doesn’t pass the smell test,” according to Nicastro’s biography.

I’m not so sure about that. We know about police brutality. We know for example that George Floyd was killed by police while being apprehended, after being suspected of using a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. And that was on an ordinary Monday in a peaceful, prosperous country.

The soldier who killed Archimedes was not having a normal Monday dealing with petty delinquents. This soldier was in enemy territory in an active war zone. You would think that this soldier would have been on high alert against ambushes and sudden movements, quite rightly.

And let’s consider what the soldier’s opinion of Archimedes would have been. Archimedes was well known and famously led the military engineering efforts that fended off the Romans for years. What would the soldier think of the figurehead of the enemy? Would he find that such a great geometer must be spared for the greater good? Or would he think that Archimedes was a terrorist responsible for the deaths of his friends?

This soldier may very well have seen first hand the death and suffering inflicted by Archimedes’s famous warfare machines. Maybe for example a friend of his drowned when Archimedes sunk a Roman ship during one of the previous invasion attempts. Or maybe his brother had his legs crushed by one of Archimedes’s catapults, and returned home as a cripple, which made such an impression on the younger brother that an unstoppable hatred festered in him and he swore to dedicate his life to revenge against this evil Greek insurgent.

Indeed, maybe on this very day, the day that he came to stand before Archimedes, this soldier has already had to watch helplessly as a close friend and brother in arms died a gruesome death. Such things can happen in war.

So I don’t think we can say: the soldier wouldn’t have killed Archimedes because he had orders not to and, rationally speaking, it would have been in his best interest to obey. This soldier may very well have been under immense and acute psychological pressure and trauma at this moment, when he happened to come face to face with the very symbol of everything he had been taught to hate. That’s what I think about this so-called “smell test.”

But that’s the soldier’s psychology. Now let’s consider it from Archimedes’s point of view. Would Archimedes be calm and collected and compliant when the soldier comes to arrest him? No, he would not.

The invasion is even more traumatic for Archimedes. Archimedes was born in Syracuse and spent his life there. There is every reason to think that these roots meant a lot to Archimedes. Archimedes was famous already in his lifetime. No doubt he had generous offers to go elsewhere, just like superstar academics today. But Archimedes stayed.

And he wrote his treatises in the local dialect of Greek, rather than adapting to the more prestigious version of Greek spoken in Athens and Alexandria. Perhaps again a sign of local pride.

Archimedes also mentions his father, who was apparently an astronomer. So that’s another sign that Archimedes attached some importance to his heritage.

And of course Archimedes was heavily involved in the defense of the city as a military engineer for many years. Obviously another sign of considerable patriotism.

And now, all of that is being destroyed. Archimedes’s birthplace, his home for his entire life, burnt and ransacked by a heartless military force.

If Archimedes looks out his window all he sees is everyone he ever loved being slaughtered, and generations of cultural heritage being sadistically trampled to dust by soldiers’ boots.

This would be heartbreak and trauma enough. But it’s worse. It’s worse for Archimedes because he was in charge of the defense. It’s his fault. All this blood is on his hands. Or so it would seem to him.

Archimedes was given every resource to orchestrate the Syracusan defense. All those notorious warfare machines that held the Romans at bay for so long: that’s not something you throw together in your basement. Archimedes must have been entrusted with massive resources and he must have had considerable manpower under his command.

His friends and brothers had put their faith in him in their hour of need, and he failed. Archimedes has let them all down. He has let his father down, and his forefathers.

Not only is Archimedes watching his city burn. He is also overcome by the crushing guilt that this is all because of his personal failure.

How do you think this guy is going to react when an enemy soldier comes to take him away? He’s not in a mood to be read his Miranda rights, is he?

It was time for Archimedes to go. Shot down on the pavement. It was the only honorable option left.

Most of the historical accounts frame the death of Archimedes in terms of the trope of the absent-minded professor, lost in a diagram, oblivious to the world around him. I imagine that this is a sanitized account. Most of the historical accounts were written under Roman rule.

Maybe the real events were quite a bit uglier and a lot less flattering for Roman historians to repeat. Maybe Archimedes was not so cartoonishly lost in geometrical thought at that moment as story-tellers pretend. Maybe he knew full well what was going on, like any normal person would. Especially since he was obviously very well aware of the prospect of Roman military invasion, and he would understand very well what it meant when Roman soldiers had reached his house.

Archimedes was an experienced military engineer who had lived under the immediate threat of military attack for years. Is it too much to imagine that such a person would carry a weapon, perhaps a small dagger?

Well, now is the time to use it. If not now, when?

Of course by the time it comes to that you have already lost. You don’t have a dagger because you think you will be able to fight your way out. You carry the dagger because when the time comes to use it your choices are: die on your knees or take one ------ down with you.

That’s how I would write Archimedes: The Gritty Reboot.

If that’s what happened then Roman historians would hardly want to admit it. It doesn’t do their self-image any favors that the great Archimedes would rather die than be taken alive by Romans. So the literary cliché of a philosopher so absorbed in thought that he does not notice his surroundings is a welcome euphemism readily at hand.

I quoted earlier the standard story from Plutarch, which leans into this cliché very heavily. Actually Plutarch also goes on to give two other versions of the death of Archimedes. “Others write”, he says. And then he says for instance that Archimedes was killed because a soldier mistook his astronomical instruments for gold trinkets and killed him to plunder his valuables. I don’t think so, but even this version clearly has some elements of truth. Namely, there was indeed plundering by the soldiers and some flashy-looking astronomical instruments made by Archimedes were indeed stolen by the Romans and publicly displayed in Rome. So this would have given some credence to the story.

Maybe Plutarch is relieved that there is some ambiguity regarding the death of Archimedes. Maybe he knew full well that these alternative stories are not true. Indeed, he first tells the standard story as if it was unequivocal fact, and then he adds the qualifier “others write” when telling the other versions. As if he knew...

Death of Archimedes