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Marcellus, however, made himself master of the fort of Euryalus, and had closely invested Achradina, when the Carthaginian army under Himilco and Hippocrates advanced to the relief of the city. Their efforts were, however, in vain; all their attacks on the camp of Marcellus were repulsed, and they were unable to effect a junction with Epicydes and the Syracusan garrison. The unhealthiness of the country soon gave rise to a pestilence which carried off both the Carthaginian generals and led to the entire break-up of the army. Shortly afterward the treachery of a leader of Spanish mercenaries in the Syracusan service opened to Marcellus the gates of Achradina, and in the general attack that ensued he made himself master of the island of Ortygia also. The city was given up to plunder, and Archimedes was slain by a Roman soldier, being so intent upon a mathematical problem at the time that he did not answer a question that was asked him. He was deeply regretted by Marcellus, who gave orders for his burial, and befriended his surviving relatives.
The archeologist's answer is that the real drama of daily life of the settlers--the life they knew 24 hours a day--is locked in the unwritten history beneath humus and tangled vegetation of the island. Here a brass thimble from the ruins of a cottage still retains a pellet of paper to keep it on a tiny finger that wore it 300 years ago. A bent halberd in an abandoned well, a discarded sword, and a piece of armor tell again the passing of terror of the unknown, after the Indians retreated forever into the distant hills and forests. Rust-eaten axes, wedges, mattocks, and saws recall the struggle to clear a wilderness. The simple essentials of life in the first desperate years have largely vanished with traces of the first fort and its frame buildings. But in later houses the evidence of Venetian glass, Dutch and English delftware, pewter, and silver eating utensils, and other comforts and little luxuries tell of new-found security and the beginning of wealth. In all, a half-million individual artifacts at the Jamestown museum represent the largest collection from any 17th-century colonial site in North America.
Various opinions have been held as to whether we have any trace of a religious belief. Theoretically speaking, they had some sort of a religion, though doubtless very vague and indistinct; for we know of no nation as far advanced as they were destitute of it.<37> It has been pointed out, that the bones of some animals, as the horse, were very rare, and their absence explained as the result of superstitious reasons. It has also been conjectured that some of the perforated bones and teeth of animals found in various deposits were amulets worn for religious purposes; and some have gone so far as to infer, that the ornamentations on some of these so-called amulets represent the sun, and that, consequently, sun-worship prevailed among the Cave-men. While these various conjectures are, of course, possible, it is equally certain they are all "mere guess-work."
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