ABSTRACT
The connection of science with war has grown gradually more and more intimate. It began with Archimedes, who helped his cousin the tyrant of Syracuse to defend that city against the Romans in 212 Be. In Plutarch's Life of Marcellus there is a highly romantic and obviously largely mythical account of the engines of war that Archimedes invented. I quote North:
(Before war had begun) 'The king prayed him to make him some engines, both to
assault and defend, in all manner of sieges and assaults. So Archimede~made him many engines, but King Hieron never occupied any of them, because he reigned the most part of his time in peace without any wars. But this provision and munition of engines served the Syracusans marvellously at that time (when Syracuse was besieged). When Archimedes fell to handle his engines, and to set them at liberty, there flew in the air infinite kinds of shot, and marvellous great stones, with an incredible great noise and force on the sudden, upon the footmen that came to assault the city by land, bearing down and tearing in pieces all those which came against them, or in what place soever they lighted, no earthly body being able to
resist the violence of so heavy a weight: so that all their ranks were marvellously disordered. And as for the galleys that gave assault by sea, some were sunk with long pieces of timber, which were suddenly blown over the waIls with force of their engines into their galleys, and so sunk them by their overgreat weight. Other being hoist up by their prows with hands of iron, and hooks made like cranes' bills, plunged their poops into the sea. Other being taken up with certain engines fastened within, one contrary to another, made them tum in the air like a whirligig, and so cast them upon the rocks by the tour walls, and splitted them all to fitters, to the great spoil and murder of the persons that were within them. And sometimes the ships and galleys .were lift clean out of the water, that it was a fearful thing to see them hang and tum in the air as they did: until that, casting their men within them over the hatches, some here, some there, by this terrible turning, they came in the end to be empty, and to break against the walls, or else to fall into the sea again, when their engine left their hold.'
