His father was Phidias, an astronomer, and he may have been in the family of a king of Syracuse. Syracuse was a rich Greek city, on the seashore in Sicily. When Archimedes was about ten years old, he left Syracuse to study in Alexandria, Egypt. He was in the school of Euclid, a famous mathematician. Not much is known about the personal life of Archimedes, for example, whether he was married or if he had children.