Wings Needed
In Carthago, sprawled among the olive groves that stretched along the bay shore to Tunes and beyond, there was consternation. Bomilcar, with 130 quinqueremes, quadriremes and triremes, had reached the promontory of Pachynus at the southeast corner of Sicily, only to turn back at sight of 100 Roman galleys standing out from Syracusae (TIME, Ides of Maius, 211 B.C.). Bomilcar said the wind had been against him. His fellow Carthaginians knew the coward had lost the last chance to break the flow of Roman strength where Scylla & Charybdis guard the narrow straits between Messana and Rhegium on the mainland.
The invasion of Sicily was not going too well. Himilco with his 25,000 men and twelve armored elephants still held Agrigentum, "the most beautiful city of mortals." But the Romans had taken Panormus (Palermo) and the legions had occupied Tauromenium (Taormina) in the shadow of Mt. Aetna, beneath whose massive weight Zeus had imprisoned the rebellious giants.
Then came couriers with shattering news: Syracusae had fallen to the Romans, and in the sack a maddened legionary had run his sword through Archimedes, greatest of mathematicians,* as he did geometry in the sand.
In the market place and in the great hall before the belching statue of Ba'al Hammon, whose appetite was for little babies, the reclining couch strategists of Carthago reasoned that the root of the failure lay in the refusal of the Hasdrubals, Hamilcars, Hannos and Himilcos to profit by the example of Daedalus. Imprisoned by Minos in the labyrinth in Crete, Daedalus had fixed wings to his shoulders with wax and flown to Sicily. Had the great Hannibal been home, instead of wandering about Italy hunting for legions to defeat, they assured one another, he would have known how to adapt the solo flight to military needs. He would have flown an army in. It was clearly the only way. Wiseacres added that a day would come.
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