Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/100

 62 STATESMEN AND SAGES 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 1 20 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 re- specting 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 Trans- actions." Archimedes has been styled the Homer of geometry; yet it must not be con- cealed 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 science."