Marcus Claudius Marcellus

Marcus Claudius Marcellus was a Roman general and five-time consul celebrated as the “Sword of Rome.” He won the spolia opima by killing a Gallic king in single combat and later commanded during the Second Punic War.

Marcellus besieged and captured Syracuse despite the defensive devices associated with Archimedes, and Roman troops killed the mathematician during the sack. Marcellus himself died in a Carthaginian ambush in 208 BC. Marcus Claudius Marcellus was born in Ancient Rome and died in Venosa.

Gillian Bradshaw’s The Sand-Reckoner brings Marcus Claudius Marcellus into Archimedes’s story as the Roman commander whose siege of Syracuse turns the mathematician’s engineering into a weapon of war. Marcellus’s determination to capture the city, and his reported respect for Archimedes, give the novel its Roman counterpoint to the Syracusan court and culminate in the conquest during which Archimedes is killed.