It’s less well known that he designed extraordinary weapons of war to defend his city and attempt to break the Roman siege. He’s still remembered today as a brilliant mathematician, scientist, engineer, and the man who shouted eureka from his bathtub. That man was Archimedes, the greatest genius of his age. It was protected by thick walls, loyal soldiers, and the ingenuity of its most famous inhabitant. Unfortunately for the Romans, Syracuse was far from defenseless. It was simply too important to lose, so in 214 BC Rome sent an army to occupy the city. Syracuse, which is located on the east coast of the island of Sicily, was one of the largest and most influential cities in the known world. The city had once been an independent ally of Rome, but now it seemed it might ally itself with Carthage. In 215 BC, during the second of these wars, a new ruler came to power in the city of Syracuse. With King Pyrrhus having retreated from Italy, the Romans plunged into a trilogy of wars with Carthage, a major trading and naval power located barely more than 50 miles from Rome in North Africa. The Romans had defeated their first major rival, but many more would follow. Having been one of the first to witness the relentless nature of the Roman war machine, Pyrrhus led what remained of his army across the Mediterranean and into North Africa, where he hoped to find easier pickings. This is the origin of the phrase “pyrrhic victory.” As Pyrrhus contemplated the battered state of his army, he reportedly lamented that one more such victory would be his ruin. These victories had come at considerable cost. Pyrrhus twice defeated the Romans in major battles, but they stubbornly refused to surrender. The Roman legions were not yet the deadly weapon of war they would become, and they had no experience whatsoever of fighting against war elephants. His intention was to put the upstart Romans back in their place, and quite possibly to carve out a corner of the empire for himself. With these cities threatened by the growing power of Rome, a Greek general by the name of King Pyrrhus led an army of infantry, cavalry, and war elephants into Italy. As Rome sought to expand its borders, it soon clashed with other powers in the Mediterranean region, most notably the Greeks who still possessed several cities in Sicily and the Italian mainland. In 282 BC Rome was still little more than an ambitious city state.
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January 2023
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