Archimedes and history.

This fall we’ll start a year studying ancient history, drawing from the History Odyssey curriculum (Level One).   I say "drawing from" rather than "following" because there’s far too much packed into that curriculum for us to actually do — I’ll have to pick and choose a little.  Now in the last couple of months of summer I’m reading aloud from a few books chosen to whet the kids’ appetites.  Last night we finished Archimedes and the Door of Science, a wonderfully written biography written by Jeanne Bendick.  Oscar loves biography, as we discovered last year.  (Which gave me the idea for a whole American History curriculum based entirely on biography, but haven’t had time to work on.) 

We finished the Archimedes book very quickly.  It is engaging but avoids too much speculation and made-up dialogue, and as far as I can tell from Wikipedia, sticks pretty closely to what is known about Archimedes.  Ms. Bendick is careful to mention from time to time which discoveries are known from Archimedes’s surviving works and which are known only from accounts written by others, the Archimedean work being lost.  One bit that delighted me:  Instead of writing herself about the Roman general Marcellus’s assault on the city of Syracuse, which is said to have been foiled by various Archimedes-designed war machines, she quoted Plutarch at length, letting him tell the story.   When I read this aloud to my family, Oscar wriggled with delight and shouted "Yay Archimedes!" and Mark laughed aloud at the line "deriding his own artificers and engineers."  Here is the excerpt in full, which can be found here:

When, therefore, the Romans assaulted the walls in two places at once, fear and consternation stupefied the Syracusans, believing that nothing was able to resist that violence and those forces. But when Archimedes began to ply his engines, he at once shot against the land forces all sorts of missile weapons, and immense masses of stone that came down with incredible noise and violence; against which no man could stand; for they knocked down those upon whom they fell in heaps, breaking all their ranks and files. In the meantime huge poles thrust out from the walls over the ships sunk some by the great weights which they let down from on high upon them; others they lifted up into the air by an iron hand or beak like a crane’s beak and, when they had drawn them up by the prow, and set them on end upon the poop, they plunged them to the bottom of the sea; or else the ships, drawn by engines within, and whirled about, were dashed against steep rocks that stood jutting out under the walls, with great destruction of the soldiers that were aboard them. A ship was frequently lifted up to a great height in the air (a dreadful thing to behold), and was rolled to and fro, and kept swinging, until the mariners were all thrown out, when at length it was dashed against the rocks, or let fall. At the engine that Marcellus brought upon the bridge of ships, which was called Sambuca, from some resemblance it had to an instrument of music, while it was as yet approaching the wall, there was discharged a piece of rock of ten talents weight, then a second and a third, which, striking upon it with immense force and a noise like thunder, broke all its foundation to pieces, shook out all its fastenings, and completely dislodged it from the bridge. So Marcellus, doubtful what counsel to pursue, drew off his ships to a safer distance, and sounded a retreat to his forces on land. They then took a resolution of coming up under the walls, if it were possible, in the night; thinking that as Archimedes used ropes stretched at length in playing his engines, the soldiers would now be under the shot, and the darts would, for want of sufficient distance to throw them, fly over their heads without effect. But he, it appeared, had long before framed for such occasions engines accommodated to any distance, and shorter weapons; and had made numerous small openings in the walls, through which, with engines of a shorter range, unexpected blows were inflicted on the assailants. Thus, when they who thought to deceive the defenders came close up to the walls, instantly a shower of darts and other missile weapons was again cast upon them. And when stones came tumbling down perpendicularly upon their heads, and, as it were, the whole wall shot out arrows at them, they retired. And now, again, as they were going off, arrows and darts of a longer range inflicted a great slaughter among them, and their ships were driven one against another; while they themselves were not able to retaliate in any way. For Archimedes had provided and fixed most of his engines immediately under the wall; whence the Romans, seeing that indefinite mischief overwhelmed them from no visible means, began to think they were fighting with the gods.

Yet Marcellus escaped unhurt, and deriding his own artificers and engineers, "What," said he, "must we give up fighting with this geometrical Briareus, who plays pitch-and-toss with our ships, and, with the multitude of darts which he showers at a single moment upon us, really outdoes the hundred-handed giants of mythology?" And, doubtless, the rest of the Syracusans were but the body of Archimedes’s designs, one soul moving and governing all; for, laying aside all other arms, with this alone they infested the Romans and protected themselves. In fine, when such terror had seized upon the Romans, that, if they did but see a little rope or a piece of wood from the wall, instantly crying out, that there it was again, Archimedes was about to let fly some engine at them, they turned their backs and fled, Marcellus desisted from conflicts and assaults, putting all his hope in a long siege.

The book included an illustration of Roman soldiers flinching and running away from a dangling rope-end.  Charming!

I find myself looking forward to studying history along with my kids perhaps more than any other major homeschooling subject, perhaps because it’s the one where my own education is the most lacking.   We’ll be looking together at the books and materials, and the sources will be our teachers.  It really drives home to me the truth that, to homeschool effectively, it’s less important that you know a lot about it when you begin than that you can get excited about it and that you know where to go for what you need.

And another thing — it’s nice to have some idea about what the subject can teach you about the nature of knowledge, about the human experience of living in the world, about your general world view.  I think I’d like Oscar to carry away from his study of history the realization that you don’t have to rely on tertiary sources and secondhand accounts — often you can go to the source.  That you can read about historical figures, or you can read what those people produced themselves.  That different witnesses record different things about the same event, and it’s partly because they saw different things, partly because they remembered different things, partly because they decided different things were important, and maybe even because both of them are lying about some of it.  That people make the same mistakes over and over again in new ways.  That whatever the context, everyone makes choices, has a chance to affect something that happens later, however small and short-lived.