Mind-Benders of Greek & Roman History
Archimedes was killed mid-theorem — and Cicero later found his lost tomb
When Rome took Syracuse in 212 BCE, Archimedes was cut down by a Roman soldier — reportedly while absorbed in a geometric diagram — even though the general had ordered his life be spared. More than a century later, Cicero hunted down and restored his neglected, overgrown tomb.
How we know
Archimedes d. 212 BCE at the fall of Syracuse; Cicero located and restored the tomb as quaestor in Sicily in 75 BCE — 137 years later. The “death by diagram” is one of several ancient traditions (Plutarch).
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.