Scanned text contains errors.
270
teristics respectively of the iambus and of the trochee. These short feet he formed into continued systems, by uniting every two of them into a pair (a metre or dipodia), in which one arsis was more strongly accentuated than the other, and one of the two theses was left doubtful as to quantity, so that, considered with reference to musical rhythm, each dipod formed a bar.* Hence arose the great kindred dramatic metres, the iambic trimeter and the trochaic tetrameter, as well as the shorter forms of iambic and trochaic verse. Archilochus was the inventor also of the epode, which was formed by subjoining to one or more verses a shorter one. One form of the epode, in which it consists of three trochees, was called the ithyphallic verse (i#y<£aAA.os). He used also a kind of verse compounded of two different metrical structures, which was called asynartete. Some writers ascribe to him the invention of the Saturnian verse. (Bent-ley's Dissertation on Phalaris.) Archilochus introduced several improvements in music, which began about his time to be applied to the public recitations of poetry.
The best opportunity we have of judging of the structure of Archilochus' poetry, though not of its satiric character, is furnished by the Epodes of Horace, as we learn from that poet himself (Epist. L 19. 23) :
" Parios ego prinmm iambos Ostendi Latio, numeros animosque secutus Archilochz, non res et agentia verba Lycarnben."
Some manifest translations of Archilochus may be traced in the Epodes. The fragments of Archilochus which remain are collected in Jacobs' Antliol. Grace.y Gaisford's Poet. Graec. Min., Bergk's Poet. Lijrici Graec^ and by Liebel, ArcMlochi Re-
uiae^ Lips. 1812, 8vo.
Fabricius (ii. pp. 107—110) discusses fully the passages in which other writers of the name are supposed to be mentioned. [P. S.]
ARCHIMEDES ('Apxrf^), of Syracuse, the most famous of ancient mathematicians, was born b. c. 287, if the statement of Tzetzes, which makes him 75 years old at his death, be correct.
Of his family little is known. Plutarch calls him a relation of king Hiero; but Cicero (Tusc. Disp. v. 23), contrasting him apparently not with Dionysius (as Torelli suggests in order to avoid the contradiction), but with Plato and Archytas, says, " humilem homunculum a pulvere et radio excitabo." At any rate, his actual condition in life does not seem to have been elevated (Siiius ItaL xiv. 343), though he was certainly a friend, if not a kinsman, of Hiero. A modern tradition makes him an ancestor of the Syracusan virgin martyr St. Lucy. (Rivaltus, in viL Arcliim. Maz-zitchelli, p. 6.) In the early part of his life he travelled into Egypt, where he is said, on the authority of Proclus, to have studied under Conon the Samian, a mathematician and astronomer (mentioned by Virg. Ed. iii. 40), who lived under the Ptolemies, Philadelphia and Euergetes, and for whom he testifies his respect and esteem in
* These two remarks apply to the first arsis and the first thesis of the iambic metre, and to the second arsis and the second thesis of the trochaic :
several places of his works. (See the introductions to the Quadrature, Paraboles and the De H.elicibus.) After visiting other countries, he returned to Syracuse. (Diod. v. 37.) Livy (xxiv. 34) calls him a distinguished astronomer, " unicus spectator coeli siderumque;" a description of which the truth is made sufficiently probable by his treatment of the astronomical questions occurring in the Arena-rius. (See also Macrob. Somn, Scip. ii. 3.) He was popularly best known as the inventor of several ingenious machines ; but Plutarch (Marcell. c. 14), who, it should be observed, confounds the application of geometry to mechanics with the solution of geometrical problems by mechanical means, represents him as despising these contrivances, and only condescending to withdraw himself from the abstractions of pure geometry at the request of Hiero. Certain it is, however, that Archimedes did cultivate not only pure geometry, but also the mathematical theory of several branches of physics, in a truly scientific spirit, and with a success which placed him very far in advance of the age in which he lived. His theory of the lever was the foundation of statics till the discovery of the composition of forces in the time of Newton, and no essential addition was made to the principles of the equilibrum of fluids and floating bodies, established by him in his treatise " De Insidenti-bus," till the publication of Stevin's researches on the pressure of fluids in 1608. (Lagrange, Mcc. Anal. vol. i. pp. 11,176.)
He constructed for Hiero various engines of war, which, many years afterwards, were so far effectual in the defence of Syracuse against Marcellus, as to convert the siege into a blockade, and delay the taking of the city for a considerable time. (Pint. Marcell. 15-18 ; Liv. xxiv. 34; Polyb. viii. 5-9.) The accounts of the performances of these engines are evidently exaggerated; and the story of the burning of the Roman ships by the reflected rays of the sun, though very current in later times, is probably a fiction, since neither Polybius, Livy, nor Plutarch gives the least hint of it. The earliest writers who speak of it are Galen (De Temper, iii. 2) and his contemporary Lucian (Hippias, c. 2), who (in the second century) merely allude to it as a thing well known. Zonaras (about A. d. 1100) mentions it in relating the use of a similar apparatus, contrived by a certain Proclus, when Byzantium was besieged in the reign of Anastasius; and gives Dion as his authority, without referring to the particular passage. The extant works of Dion contain no allusion to it. Tzetzes (about 1150) gives an account of the principal inventions of Archimedes (Cliil. ii. 103—156), and amongst them of this burning machine, which,he says, set the Roman ships on fire when they came within a bow-shot of the walls; and consisted of a large hexagonal mirror with smaller ones disposed round it, each of the latter being a polygon of 24 sides The subject has been a good deal discussed ir modern times, particularly by Cavalieri (in cap. 2£ of a tract entitled " Del Specchio Ustorio," Bologna 1650), and by Buffon, who has left an elaborat( dissertation upon it in his introduction to the his tory of minerals. (Oeuvres, torn. v. p. 301, &c. The latter author actually succeeded in igniting wood at a distance of 150 feet, by means of ; combination of 148 plane mirrors. The questioi is also examined in vol. ii. of Peyrard's Archi medes ; and a prize essay upon it by Capelle i
