 Diogenes Laertius reports that Archytas was “the first to systematize mechanics by using mathematical first principles” (VIII 83 = A1), and Archytas is accordingly sometimes hailed by modern scholars as the founder of the science of mechanics. There is a puzzle, however, since, no ancient Greek author in the later mechanical tradition (e.g., Heron, Pappus, Archimedes, Philon) ever ascribes any work in the field to Archytas. What did the ancients mean by mechanics? A rough definition would be “the description and explanation of the operation of machines” (Knorr 1996). The earliest treatise in mechanics, the Mechanical Problems ascribed to Aristotle, begins with problems having to do with a simple machine, the lever. Pappus (AD 320) refers to machines used to lift great weights, machines of war such as the catapult, water lifting machines, amazing devices (automata), and machines that served as models of the heavens (1024.12 – 1025.4, on Pappus, see Cuomo 2000). Pappus emphasizes, however, that, in addition to this practical part of mechanics, there is a theoretical part that is heavily mathematical (1022. 13–15). Given his interest in describing physical phenomena in mathematical terms, it might seem logical that Archytas would make important contributions to mechanics. The actual evidence is less conclusive. A great part of the tendency to assign Archytas a role in the development of mechanics can be traced to Plutarch’s story about the quarrel between Plato and Archytas over Archytas’ supposed mechanical solution to the problem of doubling the cube. This story is likely to be false (see 2.1 above). Some scholars have argued that Archytas devised machines of war (Diels 1965; Cambiano 1998), as Archimedes did later, but this conclusion is based on questionable inferences and no ancient source ascribes such machines to Archytas. The only mechanical device that can with some probability be assigned to Archytas, apart from the children’s toy known as a “clapper” (A10), is an automaton in the form of a wooden dove, which was connected to a pulley and counterweight and “flew” up from a lower perch to a higher one, when set in motion by a puff of air (A10a). Kingsley is deeply critical of scholars who see these inventions as toys and suggests connections to earlier Chinese inventors who produced a wooden bird that could fly for military purposes (2014: 155–9). Others have suggested that, since ancient siege devices were called by the names of animals (e.g., “tortoise” and “crow”), Archytas’ “dove” might have been an early catapult of his devising, or a projectile hurled by such a catapult, which was later misunderstood to be a mechanical dove (Berryman 2003: 355; 2009: 78). However, no ancient source explains the dove in this way. A complicating factor here is that Diogenes Laertius reports (A1) that there was a book on mechanics in circulation, which some thought to be by a different Archytas, so that it is possible that the flying dove is, in fact, the work of a separate Archytas. Archytas’ solution to the duplication of the cube, although it was not mechanical itself, was of enormous importance for mechanics, since the solution to the problem allows one not just to double a cube but also to construct bodies that are larger or smaller than a given body in any given ratio. Thus, the solution permits the construction of a full-scale machine on the basis of a working model. Pappus cites the solution to the duplication of the cube as one of the three most crucial geometrical theorems for practical mechanics (Math. Coll. 1028. 18–21). It may then be that Archytas’ primary contribution to mechanics was precisely his solution to the duplication of the cube and that it is this solution which constituted the mathematical first principles which Archytas provided for mechanics. For a recent discussion of these issues seen Berryman 2009: 87–97. It is more doubtful that Archytas wrote a treatise on mechanics. Schofield has recently argued that the evidence for Archytas’ work both in optics and in mechanics is so meagre that we should “be skeptical about Archytas’ alleged role” (2014: 86).