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Wellsprings

Syracuse (Sicily)

Magna Graecia

The greatest Greek city of the West—a Corinthian colony that grew into a Mediterranean superpower, fended off both Athens and Carthage, and gave the world the comic poet Epicharmus and the towering genius of Archimedes.

12 most-discussed ideas

Syracuse (Sicily) through the eras

Classical Age

Ruled in turn by powerful tyrants—Gelon, who crushed Carthage at Himera in 480 BCE, and Dionysius I, who made Syracuse the dominant power of the Greek West—the city famously destroyed the great Athenian expedition sent against it in 415–413 BCE, a catastrophe that turned the Peloponnesian War. Its court drew Pindar and Aeschylus, nurtured the comic playwright Epicharmus, and lured Plato himself to Sicily in his vain hope of educating a philosopher-king in the younger Dionysius.

Hellenistic Age

Under the long, prosperous reign of King Hiero II (c. 270–215 BCE), Syracuse reached its cultural zenith as a brilliant Hellenistic capital. Here Archimedes—mathematician, physicist, and engineer—discovered the principle of buoyancy, calculated pi, and devised the war machines that held off the Roman siege; here too the pastoral poet Theocritus invented the bucolic genre. When the city sided with Carthage in the Second Punic War, the Roman general Marcellus stormed it in 212 BCE, and a soldier killed Archimedes amid the sack.

Roman Era

Reduced to a provincial city of Roman Sicily, Syracuse kept its prestige and beauty—Cicero, as a young quaestor, famously rediscovered Archimedes' neglected tomb here. It remained a major center of Greek culture on the island, its theater and monuments still admired, even as Sicily passed firmly into the Roman world.

Teachers who lived here

Works composed here

Ideas shaped here

Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Syracuse (Sicily). Click any to trace the idea across time and place.

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