On the fall of Syracuse, orders were given by Marcellus, the Roman general, that the philosopher should be respected; but he was so absorbed in a problem, that the soldier who was sent after him not being able to solve the problem of who he was, or what he was about, fell upon and slew him.
It is of the great man we have been noticing that a story is told, which proves that the pursuit of the laws of gravity may sometimes be associated with the ludicrous. King Hiero, of Syracuse, had handed over a good lump of pure gold to a working jeweller to be converted into a crown, with the distinct understanding that the true metal only should be used, and that there might be no alloy to the pleasure his Majesty would feel in wearing it. The goldsmith brought back an article of the proper weight; but the king, after trying it on his head, turning it over in his mind, and revolving it beneath his eyes in the sun, declared his suspicion that the metal had been tampered with, and a base imposition had been practised. He consulted Archimedes as to the means of detecting the imposture; and on one of those days when the friends of the philosopher had forced him to take a bath, he became immersed as deeply in speculation as in the water.
The bath into which he plunged having been full to the brim, the apartment was soon flooded by the water he displaced; and looking at the wet floor, he thought only of the dry facts of science. It occurred to him that any body of equal bulk would have done exactly the same thing; and he immediately thought of his royal master's crown, which, if all the gold sent for its construction had been fairly used up, should displace as much water as a piece of pure metal equal in weight to that which the crown ought to contain. The moment the idea struck him he jumped out of the bath, and thinking of nothing but the bare facts, he ran through the streets, perfectly unconscious of the naked truth of his own condition. His shout was εὕρηκα[52]--I have found it; but everybody thought, when they saw him, that whatever he might have found, he had certainly lost his senses.
[Illustration: Archimedes taking a Warm Bath.]
There is, no doubt, much exaggeration in the absurd stories told of Archimedes; but we may excuse a little oddness in a great man whom none was even with. He ran so far in advance of his age, that eighteen centuries had nearly elapsed before any one came up to him, and then it was chiefly by following the track marked out by his footsteps.[53]