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Archimedes and the Design of Euryalus Fort

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. W. Lawrence
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Extract

The argument of this paper is that the fort on the Euryalus at Syracuse was modernised by Archimedes, who is recorded to have been the chief military engineer or scientific adviser to his native city before and during the siege by the Romans.

The fort lay outside the populated area of Syracuse though within the walls. The town had originally been confined to an island between the two harbours, but soon extended on to the mainland of Sicily; the ground to the west was swampy, hence the suburbs necessarily spread up the Epipolae hill to the north. This hill forms a tilted plateau, 3½ miles long, which slopes towards the island, but is surrounded elsewhere by a cliff, except at the inland extremity where it joins on to higher country. Since the cliff afforded a strong line of defence, the town walls were eventually carried all round the edge of the plateau, making them 17 miles in circuit. This great extension was the work of the tyrant Dionysius I, in the year 402 and later; the need for it had been demonstrated twelve years earlier, when the Athenians captured the plateau and almost starved the town into surrender. The strongest part of the fortifications was necessarily at the inland extremity of the plateau, the one place where nature provided no obstacles. Here the highest ground runs off to the west in a ridge that rises into two gentle mounds, one of which was called Euryalus, meaning the ‘wide nail’ (or wart). The town-walls included only one of these summits, and upon it stands the fort in question, overlooking one of the main gateways of the city.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 66 , November 1946 , pp. 99 - 107
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1946

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References

1 The fullest account and the only authoritative plans are those of the life-long student of the ruins, Mauceri, L., in his illustrated monograph, Il Castello Eurialo nella Storia e nell' Arte, second edition 1939Google Scholar (Azienda autonoma per la Stazione di Turismo di Siracusa). I ought to state that I have not revisited the site since I formulated my theory.

2 Cf. the map in JHS LXIV 101Google Scholar.

3 Fougères' arguments were re-stated and elaborated by Schramm, RM XL 1, pls. I–III, and Collingwood, , Antiquity 1932, 262, pls. I–IVGoogle Scholar.

4 Mon. Ant. Lincei XXXIII 101Google Scholar.

5 As Säflund has remarked, Opuscula Archaeologica Inst. Rom. Sueciae I 102Google Scholar.

6 Mauceri, op. cit., pls. I, II—his own work, reproduced by kind permission of his brothers, sons and heirs through the courtesy of Sig. Salvatore Mauceri.

7 Mauceri, op. cit., 26, 42, 44, fig. 10; Orsi, , Not. Sc. (1904) 283Google Scholar.

8 At least in England, which has the oldest dated examples, of 1380 and 1386 (O'Neil, , Proc. Hampshire Field Club XVI 56Google Scholar). Field guns were then well-established weapons.

9 Collingwoad, , Antiquity, VI 262Google Scholar.

10 His Belopoiika refers to meeting friends of the then dead Ctesibius, so the date of composition cannot be appreciably before 250 or after 200; RE (s.v. Philon 48) wrongly describes him as Schüler von Ktesibios. Latest edn. by Diels, and Schramm, , Abh. Preuss. Ak. 1918, Phil. hist. Kl. 16Google Scholar.

11 The actual reading of the MSS. is as follows (chap. 36): συγχύνωνται (in another MS. συγχάνωνται) πάντα ἐμβαλλό- . It will be obvious that various minor emendations are grammatically needed. The editors, however, have gone so far as to read , although Diels and Schramm translate ὑπόνομοι by untcrminiert and explain that the defenders were to effect the clearance dutch die Gegenminen. I am encouraged by Mr. J. M. Edmonds' agreement to accept the implications of ὑπόνομοι, ‘with tunnels,’ and accordingly to allow no change in this particular clause other than the insertion of a πὰ after the πάντα.

12 Apparently he did not contemplate placing heavy ballistas above ground level (see his Chapters 20–21, 26–28, 32, etc.); indeed Greek towers are generally too weak to stand such a strain.

13 I am indebted to Mr. D. H. Wilkinson, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, for this calculation.

14 A wooden drawbridge crossed the inner ditch on piers of masonry; the fact that pillars of rock were not left when the ditch was excavated is taken by Schramm as a needless case of extra labour, only excusable on the supposition of an uncompleted change of plan. But masonry was more reliable. The sortie was an essential element in Greek defensive warfare, especially as Philo describes it, and for this purpose even a large number of underground passages would form a poor substitute for a short bridge, in case the enemy should obtain a footing across the intermediate ditch. The length of the bridge thus determined the width of the ditch it crossed, and not vice versa; at this south end, the inner ditch narrows to 30 feet instead of the 52 at the north end.

15 Collingwood's belief that the chambered wall (9) was left in process of demolition can scarcely be reconciled with Mauceri's leisured observations (op. cit. 44). This wall, or viaduct, was demonstrably, and naturally, built after the completion of the towers on which it abuts, to afford means of access from them to the bridge—and presumably to the pointed outwork (10) at its side, which must have accommodated ballistas. ‘Beneath the walls and outworks, emplacements should be prepared to take the largest weapons possible and to the greatest number’ (Philo, Chap. 32). The pointed outwork did not command the floor of the ditch, as would have been the case if it were not meant as an emplacement, and the ballistas there would have had a wider arc of fire, though at shorter range, than those on the towers. Mauceri's theory that the pointed outwork is a relic of the original wall of Dionysius' fort, and contemporaneous with the ditch (op. cit. 40, pl. IV), is thus untenable; the shape, moreover, is without parallel in early Greek walls but comparable to that finally adopted for an angle salient in the Seleucid fort at Samaria, which was first built about no B.C. (Crowfoot, , Kenyon, and Sukenik, , The Buildings at Samaria, 1942, 28, 118, pl. IV)Google Scholar.

16 As Professor Cultrera kindly informs me, the Fascist government removed him from Sicily after his excavations of 1938–9 by which he hoped to determine the sequence of buildings, and he has not yet had opportunity to work out his findings.

17 I have, in what follows, combined my own observations with the views of my scientific colleagues at an Operational Research Section of the R.A.F.

18 RM. XL pl. II.

19 Heath, T. L., Works of Archimedes, p. xviGoogle Scholar; Ball, W. W. R., Short History of Mathematics, 65Google Scholar.

20 For the dates see CAH VIII 63.

21 Investigation of the ruins north-east of the fort might reveal evidence of relative dating in the city-walls and outworks (M, N, 27). In the main they should be Hellenistic to judge from the planning—which has not been satisfactorily restored—but may include stretches of Dionysius' city-wall; its hollow structure would have enabled his successors to drive their longitudinal passages through it (Mauceri, op. cit., pl. V).