Now Siracasa, a large and celebrated city on the eastern coast of Sicily, furnished with a capacious and excellent harbor. The city, founded 734 B. C., was opulent and powerful, and was divided into four or five quarters or districts, which were of themselves separate cities. The whole circumference is stated by Strabo to have been one hundred and eighty stadia, or about twenty-two English miles. Syracuse is celebrated as having been the birthplace and residence of Archimedes, whose ingenious mechanical contrivances during its siege by the Romans, 200 B. C., long delayed its capture. Paul passed three days here, on his way from Melita to Rome, in the spring of A. D. 63, Acts 28:12 . Population anciently 200,000; now 11,000.