Archmedes (ar-ke-me'-deez), a renowned mathematician. His astonishing skill in mechanics was such that some of the greatest real triumphs of antiquity may be ascribed to him. His inventions amazed his contemporaries: the lifting of weights by means of pulleys and the endless screw are among them. A Roman historian celebrates the warlike engines produced by the skill of Archimedes. His mind ever fruitful of extraordinary resources, when Syracuse was besieged by Marcellus, he constructed a burning-glass on a scale of such magnitude that by means of it the enemy's fleet was fired. Eventually, the city being taken, he was found among the slain.