Tom Holland

And he then puts the wreath in the bathtub.

And the wreath displaces more water than the gold had done, but less than the silver.

And therefore, this shows that the wreath was indeed made of adulterated gold, that the gold had been mixed with silver.

I kind of understand that vaguely.

And I gather from Nicholas Nicastro that there are various improbabilities about this.

I don't entirely understand.

But maybe they can tackle it on the rest of science.

I don't know.

Yeah.

And De Castries says that, I mean, this is kind of like the Titanic, that it was longer and heavier than HMS Victory.

Crikey.

It's huge.

It's Archimedes who's built the city walls and done so, you know, with such brilliance that they're effectively impregnable.

But most excitingly of all, he's designed a massive array of kind of futuristic war machines.

So massive catapults.

Missile launchers called scorpions, so, you know, the sting in the tail that you can fire through very narrow slits.

Giant mechanical claws which can reach out from the walls and pick up ships.

And even, it is said, a death ray.

And we'll come in due course to...

to whether this death ray actually existed.