He sought out and rediscovered the lost grave of Archimedes, the great scientist and geometer, a citizen of Syracuse who had been killed during the Roman siege more than one hundred years before. The exploit demonstrated detective skills and inquisitiveness which he put to good use in his legal career, and he recalled it with pride: When I was Quaestor, I tracked down his grave; the Syracusans not only had no idea where it was, they denied it even existed. I found it surrounded and covered by brambles and thickets. I remembered that some lines of doggerel I had heard were inscribed on his tomb
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