Magna Graecia
Syracuse is a city on the southeastern coast of Sicily, Italy. Founded by colonists from Corinth around 733 BCE it became one of the largest cities of the Greek world, resisting both Athens and Carthage. Plato visited three times, hoping to influence its rulers Dionysius I and II, and the comic poet Epicharmus and the pastoral poet Theocritus are associated with it. The mathematician Archimedes was killed when Rome took the city in 212 BCE, after which it became the capital of Roman Sicily. According to the Book of Acts, Paul stayed there for three days, and its early Christian catacombs survive. It was briefly the Byzantine capital (663-668) before the Arab conquest of 878.
12 most-discussed ideas
Syracuse (Sicily) through the eras
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.
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.
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
Epicharmus (-540–-450)
Plato (-428–-348)
advised -367
Plato (-428–-348)
visited -388
Plato (-428–-348)
advised -361
Theocritus (-300–-260)
Archimedes (-287–-212)
Diodorus Siculus (-90–-30)
Pope Stephen III (720–772)
birthplace 720
Moschus
Pope Vigilius (?–555)
death en route to Rome 555
Works composed here
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Archimedes
by Theocritus
by Theocritus
by Theocritus
by Moschus
by Moschus
by Moschus
by Epicharmus
Ideas shaped here
Concepts most frequently discussed in the works composed at Syracuse (Sicily). Click any to trace the idea across time and place.