high. Around the deck were eight wooden towers, from each of which was
raised a breastwork full of loopholes, whence an enemy might be annoyed
with stones each tower being guarded by four armed soldiers and two
archers. On this upper deck was also placed the machine invented by
Archimedes to fling stones of 300 pounds weight and darts eighteen feet
long, to the distance of 120 paces; while each of the three masts had
two engines for throwing stones. The ship was furnished with four
anchors of wood and eight of iron; and "the water-screw" of Archimedes,
already mentioned, was used instead of a pump for the vast ship; "by the
help of which one man might easily and speedily drain out the water,
though it were very deep." The whole ship's company consisted of an
immense multitude, there being in the forecastle alone 600 seamen. There
were placed on board her 60,000 bushels of corn, 10,000 barrels of salt
fish, and 20,000 barrels of flesh, besides the provisions for her
company. She was first called the Syracuse, but afterward the
Alexandria. The builder was Archias, the Corinthian shipwright. The
vessel appears to have been armed for war and sumptuously fitted for a
pleasure-yacht, yet was ultimately used to carry corn. The timber for
the main mast, after being in vain sought for in Italy, was brought from
England. The dimensions are not recorded, but they must have exceeded
those of any ship of the present day; indeed, Hiero, finding that none
of the surrounding harbors sufficed to receive his vast ship, loaded it
with corn and presented the vessel with its cargo to Ptolemy, King of
Egypt, and on arriving at Alexandria it was hauled ashore, and nothing
more is recorded respecting it. A most elaborate description of this
vast ship has been preserved to us by Athenaeus, and translated into
English by Burchett, in his "Naval Transactions."

Archimedes has been styled the Homer of geometry; yet it must not be
concealed that he fell into the prevailing error of the ancient
philosophers--that geometry was degraded by being employed to produce
anything useful. "It was with difficulty," says Lord Macaulay, "that he
was induced to stoop from speculation to practice. He was half ashamed
of those inventions which were the wonder of hostile nations, and always
spoke of them slightingly, as mere amusements, as trifles in which a
mathematician might be suffered to relax his mind after intense
application to the higher parts of his scien