Siege - Greco-Roman Era

Greco-Roman Era

Alexander the Great's Macedonian army successfully besieged many powerful cities during his astounding conquests. Two of his most impressive achievements in siegecraft took place in the Siege of Tyre and the Siege of the Sogdian Rock. His engineers built a causeway that was originally 60 m (200 ft) wide and reached the range of his torsion-powered artillery, while his soldiers pushed siege towers housing stone throwers and light catapults to bombard the city walls.

Most conquerors before him had found Tyre, a Phoenician island-city about 1 km from the mainland, impregnable. The Macedonians built a mole, a raised spit of earth across the water, by piling stones up on a natural land bridge that extended underwater to the island, and although the Tyrians rallied by sending a fire-ship to destroy the towers, and captured the mole in a swarming frenzy, the city eventually fell to the Macedonians after a seven-month siege. In complete contrast to Tyre, Sogdian Rock was captured by stealthy attack. Alexander used commando-like tactics to scale the cliffs and capture the high ground, and the demoralized defenders surrendered.

The importance of siege warfare in the ancient period should not be underestimated. One of the contributing causes of Hannibal's inability to defeat Rome was his lack of a siege train, thus, while he was able to defeat Roman armies in the field, he was unable to capture Rome itself. The legionary armies of the Roman Republic and Empire are noted as being particularly skilled and determined in siege warfare. An astonishing number and variety of sieges, for example, formed the core of Julius Caesar's mid-1st century BC conquest of Gaul (modern France).

In his Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), Caesar describes how at the Battle of Alesia the Roman legions created two huge fortified walls around the city. The inner circumvallation, 10 miles (16 km), held in Vercingetorix's forces, while the outer contravallation kept relief from reaching them. The Romans held the ground in between the two walls. The besieged Gauls, facing starvation, eventually surrendered after their relief force met defeat against Caesar's auxiliary cavalry.

The Sicarii Zealots who defended Masada in AD 73 were defeated by the Roman legions who built a ramp 100 m high up to the fortress's west wall.