Note 32 — Chapter I · CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE.

Strabo (xvi. i. 5) pretends that the hanging gardens of Babylon were watered by means of the screw of Archimedes (κοχλίας or κόχλος). If it be true that this invention was known to the Chaldæans, it may also have been used to raise water to the platforms of the Assyrian palaces. The discovery, however, is usually attributed to the Sicilian mathematician, and Strabo’s evidence is too isolated and too recent to allow us to accept it without question.