Hiero II of Syracuse
Hiero II of Syracuse is the man who set Archimedes running naked through the streets. That is how most people first encounter him, if they encounter him at all. A Greek tyrant who ruled Syracuse for six decades, born around 308 BC, Hiero outlasted wars, empires, and the shifting loyalties of an island perpetually caught between great powers. He was the illegitimate son of a Syracusan noble named Hierocles, a man who traced his family line all the way back to Gelon. Before he ever sat on a throne, Hiero served as a general under Pyrrhus of Epirus, one of the most celebrated commanders of the ancient world. What made a man like that into a king? And what kind of king keeps a genius like Archimedes close at hand? Those are the questions this story is built to answer.
When Pyrrhus departed Sicily in 275 BC, he left a power vacuum, and the Syracusan army and citizens moved quickly to fill it. They chose Hiero as commander-in-chief. He understood that military rank alone would not hold Syracuse, so he married the daughter of Leptines, one of the city's leading citizens, anchoring himself to the civic elite. His first real test came against the Mamertines, a band of mercenaries from the region of Campania. They had originally been hired by Agathocles, the late tyrant of Syracuse, but after his death they seized the stronghold of Messina and used it as a raiding base against the Greeks nearby. Hiero confronted them in a pitched battle near Mylae along the Longanus river and defeated them. Only Carthaginian interference stopped him from taking Messina itself. Between 275 and 271 BC he maneuvered himself into full control of Syracuse, doing so by aligning with the demos, the ordinary citizens. What distinguished him from the tyrants before him was restraint. He did not purge his opponents. He acknowledged the city's assemblies. He ruled, as the sources put it, within the law.
A victory over the Mamertines in 265 BC was the moment Hiero's soldiers proclaimed him king. The year after, those same Mamertines, now desperate, called on Rome for help. Hiero responded by joining forces with the Carthaginian commander Hanno, who had recently arrived in Sicily. He and Hanno met the Romans, led by the consul Appius Claudius Caudex, but the battle ended without a decisive result, and Hiero pulled back to Syracuse. Roman pressure mounted, and in 263 BC Hiero concluded a formal treaty. Under its terms, he retained authority over the south-eastern portion of Sicily and the eastern coastline as far north as Tauromenium. That agreement proved to be one of the shrewder political choices of his career. Where other rulers gambled on switching sides, Hiero stayed loyal to Rome until the end. He supplied Roman forces with men and provisions throughout the long years of the Punic conflict, maintaining a powerful fleet of his own for defensive purposes all the while.
The Roman writer Vitruvius preserved the story that made Hiero famous beyond Syracuse. Hiero had commissioned a votive crown to be offered at a temple, supplying the goldsmith with a measured quantity of gold for the purpose. When the crown was returned, Hiero suspected the smith had kept some gold and replaced the missing weight with silver. He turned to his kinsman Archimedes and asked him to find out whether the gold had been used honestly. Archimedes pondered the problem until, stepping into a bath, he noticed the water rise as his body displaced it. The principle struck him so suddenly that he leapt out and ran through the streets of Syracuse shouting "eureka, eureka!" - which means "I have found it" - without stopping to put on clothes. He applied that same displacement method to the crown, measuring its density by the volume of water it moved. Vitruvius concludes the episode plainly: the test worked. The goldsmith had indeed substituted silver for a portion of the gold. Hiero had been cheated, and Archimedes had proved it.
The poet Theocritus captured the wealth of Syracuse during Hiero's reign in his sixteenth idyll, offering a picture of a city that flourished under stable rule. Architectural changes of the period are grouped together by scholars under the label "Hieronic architecture", a cluster of decorative styles introduced into Sicily during his reign. Researchers have debated whether these stylistic shifts reflected a deliberate royal programme to project power, but the evidence does not support that reading. The innovations appear to have spread without a central directive behind them. What is harder to dispute is the practical value Hiero drew from keeping Archimedes employed in his service. The machines Archimedes designed for Syracuse were weapons. When Roman forces later besieged the city, those engines played, as the sources describe it, an important part in the defence. Hiero did not live to see that siege himself. He died shortly after the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, having ruled Syracuse from 275 to 215 BC. His reign ended just as the Second Punic War was turning its most violent corner.
Centuries after Hiero's death, Niccolo Machiavelli returned to his career in The Prince, written in the 16th century. In Chapter 6, Machiavelli singles Hiero out as an exceptionally virtuous man and a rare example of someone who climbed from private citizen to princely power. The company Machiavelli places him in is striking: Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus. For a writer so precise about which examples he trusts, that list is a measure of how seriously he read Hiero's story. The man who started as an illegitimate son of a noble, rose through a foreign general's army, won a kingship in battle, signed a treaty with Rome, and kept a city prosperous through decades of war had left a record compelling enough to serve as a lesson in statecraft more than seventeen hundred years later.
Common questions
Who was Hiero II of Syracuse?
Hiero II was a Greek ruler of Syracuse in Sicily who reigned from 275 to 215 BC. He was the illegitimate son of a Syracusan noble named Hierocles and had served as a general under Pyrrhus of Epirus before rising to power. He is notable for his long loyalty to Rome during the Punic Wars and for employing Archimedes.
What was Hiero II's connection to Archimedes and the eureka story?
Hiero II asked his kinsman Archimedes to determine whether a goldsmith had cheated him by substituting silver for gold in a votive crown. Archimedes discovered the principle of water displacement while stepping into a bath and allegedly ran naked through Syracuse shouting "eureka, eureka!" The method successfully proved the goldsmith had committed fraud, as recorded by the Roman writer Vitruvius.
How did Hiero II become king of Syracuse?
After Pyrrhus left Sicily in 275 BC, the Syracusan army and citizens appointed Hiero commander-in-chief. He was proclaimed king by his troops following a victory over the Mamertines in 265 BC. Between 275 and 271 BC he consolidated total power in the city by aligning with the demos and ruling within the law rather than through purges.
What treaty did Hiero II sign with Rome during the First Punic War?
In 263 BC, Hiero concluded a treaty with Rome under which he retained authority over the south-eastern portion of Sicily and the eastern coastline as far as Tauromenium. He remained loyal to Rome under this arrangement until his death, supplying Roman forces with men and provisions throughout the Punic conflict.
When did Hiero II of Syracuse die?
Hiero II died shortly after the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. He was born around 308 BC and ruled Syracuse from 275 to 215 BC, making his reign one of the longest in the city's history.
Why did Machiavelli cite Hiero II of Syracuse in The Prince?
In Chapter 6 of The Prince, written in the 16th century, Machiavelli cited Hiero II as an exceptionally virtuous man and a rare example of someone who rose to princely power from being a private individual. Machiavelli placed Hiero alongside Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus as models of this kind of ascent.
All sources
2 references cited across the entry
- 1The Rise of Hiero II1962