mere corruption
and annihilation of the one good of geometry,--which was thus shamefully
turning its back upon the unembodied objects of pure intelligence to
recur to sensation, and to ask help (not to be obtained without haste
subservience and depravation) from matter; so it was that mechanics came
to be separated from geometry, and, being repudiated and neglected by
philosophers, took its place as a military art. Archimedes, however,
in writing to King Hiero, whose friend and near relation he was, had
stated, that given the force, any weight might be moved, and even
boasted, we are told, relying on the strength of demonstration, that if
there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this. Hiero
being struck with amazement at this, and entreating him to make good
this problem by actual experiment, and show some great weight moved by
a small engine, he fixed accordingly upon a ship of burden out of the
king's arsenal, which could not be drawn out of the dock without great
labor and many men; and, loading her with many passengers and a full
freight, sitting himself the while far off, with no great endeavor, but
only holding the head of the pulley in his hand and drawing the cord by
degrees, he drew the ship in a straight line, as smoothly and evenly as
if she had been in the sea. The king, astonished at this, and convinced
of the power of the art, prevailed upon Archimedes to make him engines
accommodated to all the purposes, offensive and defensive, of a siege.
These the king himself never made use of, because he spent almost
all his life in a profound quiet, and the highest influence. But
the apparatus was, in a most opportune time, ready at hand for the
Syracusans, and with it also the engineer himself.

When, therefore, the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once,
fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans, believing that nothing
was able to resist that violence and those forces. But when Archimedes
began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all
sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down
with incredible noise and violence, against which no man could stand;
for they knocked down those upon whom they fell, in heaps, breaking all
their ranks and files. In the mean time huge poles thrust out from the
walls over the ships, sunk some by the great weights which they let down
from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron
hand