17.5
For it is not possible to find in geometry more profound and difficult questions treated in simpler and purer terms. Some attribute this success to his natural endowments; others think it due to excessive labour that everything he did seemed to have been performed without labour and with ease. For no one could by his own efforts discover the proof, and yet as soon as he learns it from him, he thinks he might have discovered it himself; so smooth and rapid is the path by which he leads one to the desired conclusion.
17.6
And therefore we may not disbelieve the stories told about him, how, under the lasting charm of some familiar and domestic Siren, he forgot even his food and neglected the care of his person; and how, when he was dragged by main force, as he often was, to the place for bathing and anointing his body, he would trace geometrical figures in the ashes, and draw lines with his finger in the oil with which his body was anointed, being possessed by a great delight, and in very truth a captive of the Muses.
17.7
And although he made many excellent discoveries, he is said to have asked his kinsmen and friends to place over the grave where he should be buried a cylinder enclosing a sphere, with an inscription giving the proportion by which the containing solid exceeds the contained.When Cicero was quaestor in Sicily (75 B.C.), he found this tomb, which had been neglected and forgotten by the Syracusans ( Tusc. Disp. v. 64 ff.).
18.1
Such, then, was Archimedes, and, so far as he himself was concerned, he maintained himself and his city unconquered. But during the progress of the siege Marcellus captured Megara, one of the most ancient cities of Sicily; he also captured the camp of Hippocrates at Acrillae and killed more than eight thousand men, having attacked them as they were throwing up entrenchments; furthermore, he overran a great part of Sicily, brought cities over from the Carthaginians, and was everywhere victorious over those who ventured to oppose him.
