ABSTRACT
Archimedes was Greek, and was born c. 287 BC in the city-state of Syracuse. In addition to Greece, the culturally Greek areas included, in Archimedes’ time, Sicily and parts of southern mainland Italy, some settlements around the Black Sea and a settlement near the mouth of the Rhone. When Archimedes was born, the Punic Wars were in full swing. Archimedes was contemplating a mathematical diagram. There is a tantalising story about the tomb of Archimedes. In 75 BC, more than a century after the death of Archimedes, the Roman orator Cicero was serving as quaestor in Sicily. Cicero had the tomb cleaned up, and on it he saw a carving depicting a sphere inside a cylinder which illustrated one of Archimedes’s discoveries. The inscription around the head of Archimedes is a Latin translation of something attributed to him which reads ‘Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri’.
