Siege Engine - Ancient Siege Engines

Ancient Siege Engines

The earliest engine was the battering ram, developed by the Assyrians, followed by the catapult in ancient Greece. The Spartans used battering rams in the Siege of Plataea in 429 BC, but it seems that the Greeks limited their use of siege engines to assault ladders, though Peloponnesian forces used something resembling flamethrowers.

The first Mediterranean people to use advanced siege machinery were the Carthaginians, who used siege towers and battering rams against the Greek colonies of Sicily. These engines influenced the ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius I, who developed a catapult in 399 BC.

The first two rulers to make use of siege engines to a large extent were Philip II of Macedonia and Alexander the Great. Their large engines spurred an evolution that led to impressive machines, like the Demetrius Poliorcetes' Helepolis (or "Taker of Cities") of 304 BCE: nine storeys high and plated with iron, it stood 40 m (132 ft) tall and 21 m (69 ft) wide, weighing 180 t (360,000 lb). The most utilized engines were simple battering rams, or tortoises, propelled in several ingenious ways that allowed the attackers to reach the walls or ditches with a certain degree of safety. For sea sieges or battles, seesaw-like machines (sambykē or sambuca) were used. These were giant ladders, hinged and mounted on a base mechanism and used for transferring marines onto the sea walls of coastal towns. They were normally mounted on two or more ships tied together and some sambykē included shields at the top to protect the climbers from arrows. Other hinged engines were used to catch enemy equipment or even opposing soldiers with opposable appendices which are probably ancestors to the Roman corvus. Other weapons dropped heavy weights on opposing soldiers.

The Romans preferred to assault enemy walls by building earthen ramps (agger) or simply scaling the walls, as in the early siege of the Samnite city of Silvium (306 BC). Soldiers working at the ramps were protected by shelters called vineae, that were arranged to form a long corridor. Wicker shields (plutei) were used to protect the front of the corridor during its construction. Another Roman siege engine sometimes used resembled the Greek ditch-filling tortoise, called a musculus ("muscle"). Battering rams were also widespread. The Roman Legions first used siege towers around 200 BC.

The first documented occurrence of ancient siege artillery pieces in Europe was the gastraphetes ("belly-bow"), a kind of non-torsion bolt-thrower. These were mounted on wooden frames. Greater machines forced the introduction of pulley system for loading the projectiles, which had extended to include stones also. Later torsion systems appeared, based on sinew springs. The onager was the main Roman invention in the field.

The earliest documented occurrence of ancient siege-artillery pieces in China was the levered principled traction catapult and an 8-foot-high siege crossbow from the Mozi (Mo Jing), a Mohist text written at about the 4th - 3rd century BCE by followers of Mozi who founded the Mohist school of thought during the late Spring and Autumn Period and the early Warring States period. Much of what we now know of the siege technology of the time came to us from Books 14 and 15 (Chapters 52 to 71) on Siege Warfare from the Mo Jing. Recorded and preserved on bamboo strips, much of the text is now unfortunately extremely corrupted. However, despite the heavy fragmentation, Mohist diligence and attention to details which set Mo Jing apart from other works ensured that the highly descriptive details of the workings of mechanical devices like Cloud Ladders, Rotating Arcuballistas and Levered Catapults, records of siege techniques and usage of siege weaponry can still be found today.