Exposing the myth of the "mirrors of Archimedes" that burned the Roman fleet

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The ancient era gave history a huge number of smart and talented people who, with their genius, changed the lives of their contemporaries and descendants. One of them is the renowned Greek engineer and mathematician Archimedes of Syracuse. We still use many of his discoveries today. However, there is an invention, the existence of which raises doubts among skeptics, no matter how many experiments are carried out to confirm its efficiency. We are talking about the legendary "mirrors of Archimedes".

During the Second Punic War, in 212 BC, the Roman army attempted to capture the Greek Syracuse, where the scientist and engineer Archimedes lived. The inventions of this talented man more than once rescued the inhabitants of his city during the battle. This is what happened now: the assault on Syracuse, according to the majority of ancient Greek and modern scientists, fell through precisely because of the active defense of the townspeople, who used Archimedes' machines.

Then the Romans went over to the siege. But even here the scientist was unperturbed: he already had an invention that could significantly thin out the enemy fleet. Archimedes designed a special system of mirrors - "using" sunlight, she set fire to Roman ships. The crews of the triremes were in a panic: for no apparent reason, their sails began to ignite en masse, and they could not do anything about it. The Romans could only flee on the surviving ships, and the author of the unique installation calmly watched the battle, standing on the fortified wall of his city.

This story was so exciting and amazing that it quickly turned into a legend, where fiction can be much more than truth. For centuries, many skeptics have questioned one fact of the existence of "Archimedean mirrors". And if they admitted that they did exist, they refuted their deadly power, endowing them with other, much more modest properties.

Thus, the world-famous thinker and mathematician Rene Descartes in his work "Dioptrica" called the technology allegedly used by Archimedes as impossible: “Only people who are not very well versed in optics are convinced of the reality of many fables; these mirrors, with the help of which Archimedes allegedly burned ships from afar, were either extremely large, or, more likely, did not exist at all."

And although after some time a number of experiments of various groups of scientists nevertheless proved that it is quite possible to ignite a tree at a distance with a structure of the Archimedean type, a critical attitude to this story persists to this day. Skeptics cite several arguments at once.

First, the distance between Syracuse and the Roman ships was much greater than that which was reproduced in most experiments. Secondly, the power of the rays reflected from the mirrors was insufficient for a rapid ignition - during the ignition experiments, one had to wait several minutes. And, thirdly, it is highly doubtful that in the time of Archimedes there was such a perfect technology for polishing mirrors that they were able to bring the sun's rays to one point without scattering.

Therefore, critics of the legend about the "mirrors of death" from among those who believe in their existence, consider the version about another purpose of this development more reliable. According to this theory, the reason for the ignition of the sails of the Roman triremes was more than trivial - they were struck by incendiary arrows. And Archimedes' mirrors played the role of an antique "laser sight".

Following this theory, the attack by the mirrors proceeded as follows: the Roman sailors were first blinded by the "sunbeams" from the huge bronze mirrors, and when they came to their senses, the sails of their ships were already burning, lit by arrows fired at them. Perhaps the apparatus designed by Archimedes was capable of performing both of these operations simultaneously. But the Romans, frightened out of nowhere by the fire that had come from, believed that the whole thing was in the mirrors. And so the legend of the deadly rays was born.

However, no matter how many discussions and experiments were carried out, confirming or refuting the existence of Archimedes' mirrors, one thing has been historically proven: alas, the genius of the famous engineer could not protect the city. Ultimately, Syracuse fell and were destroyed to the ground, and most of its inhabitants died, including the author of unique inventions, the great scientist Archimedes.