Tom Holland

And Heron loves them.

I mean, he can't get enough of these kind of war machines.

He's a man of peace, so he doesn't actually want to use them, but he's hoping that they will prove a deterrence.

And so for decades and decades, they do prove a deterrence, which is kind of sad for Archimedes, because I guess he'd like to see whether they'd actually work.

But fortunately for Archimedes, unfortunately for Heron,

In 215, everything changes because Hieron dies.

And by this point, he is 92 years old.

And he's succeeded by his grandson, who's a guy called Hieronymus.

And he is still only a teenager.

He's very headstrong.

He's very inexperienced.

And he fatally is persuaded by an anti-Roman faction in the city that Rome is doomed and that he should open negotiations with Carthage.

Ooh, that's a big twist.

It's in the wake of Cannae.

You can see why they would do it.

But the pro-Roman faction, which is very strong in Syracuse, they immediately have Hieronymus assassinated and there's a low-level civil war.

A republic is proclaimed.

The pro-Carthage faction triumphs and it opens negotiations with Hannibal and it starts to launch raids on Roman-held territory in Sicily.

And this, Dominic, proves to be, for Syracuse, an absolutely calamitous mistake.

Hieron had been right.