Siege Thread

[DanM]

was it common for greek armies to lay siege on cities? And were the siege twers similar to the ones the romans used?

[M.H. White]

Indeed. The Athenians, particularly, were pretty adept at siege warfare. In the years prior to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, the Spartans asked Cimon and friends to come down to Laconia and help them out with a band of helots who had holed up in some mountain fortress or such in 464(I'm sorry! I can't find my reference for that one, but Plutarch's life of Cimon might be one). You should also take a gander at the Siege of Syracuse in 414. The account of the actual siege works starts at 6.98.

Alexander the Great also had some very notable sieges, such as Tyre, Jerusalem, Halicarnassus, and some other city.

Sorry, I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the types of machines they used.

[Anonymous]

Connolly's "Greece and Rome at War" covers this (and many other interesting aspects of Greek and Roman history, as one might expect!) in a very accessible way. Certain techniques of siege warfare were already old before the Classical Period (e.g. building a ramp up to a fortress's wall). The Ancient Greeks, especially under Alexander, developed various techniques and machines for siege warfare and Demetrius, the son of Alexander's general, Antigonus, was by-named Poliorcetes - "reducer of cities".

Basically, the Romans learnt everything they knew about siege warfare - and about many other things - from the Greeks. Get the book for your Birthday, or Christmas.

[Vincula]

I found this book called beseiged at http://antoninuspius.blogspot.com/ (one of my favorite sites)

[Felix Canus]

I'm a little confused about this subject.

From what I've read of the Trojan War, Greek siege tactics seemed to be little more advanced than "beat on the gate until it falls down or it's time to go home." And by the Peloponnesian War, Greeks are masters at siegecraft.

Sure, it seems logical that a chronically irritable people can develop a lot of method in 800 years, but I have seen very little about the intermediate stages. Has anybody put together a technological timeline for this subject?

[hoplite14gr]

Economics my friend.
Palace societies could afford the resources for a siege, Greek city states porbably didn't.
First Atheninas start developling siege tactics and even spartans thought them more adept at that,.

The Hellenistic confederation and empires could spare nore resources and so artillery and siegecrat improved.

Kind regards

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

First of all,we know nothing about greek siege war in the time of the Trojan war.Some say the wooden horse was a siege machine,and it's not illogical since other cultures near the Myceneans were using siege machines resembling animals.
Secondly,by the time of the Pelloponnesian War,the Greeks were not masters of siegcraft at all!They were using primitive means,copmared to lets say the Persians.They were building a second wall arrownd the town and waited until the suplies ended!
Finally,we know little about the siege war in the that middle ages because most of the times there were no sieges.The hoplite battle evolved and as Stefanos said there were nor the funds nor the will to take a town.Victor Davis Hanson demonstrates well the conserns and capabilities of the Farmer-warrior of the time.The Greeks evolved in siegcraft with Phillip and Alexander and later with Demetrios and the "Epigonoi".
The Spartans did not even dare attack the Long Walls,that was relatively fifficult to be defended bacause of its length.The mighty Athenians,with all their wealth at the time did not take Potidaia but after two years,and the siege of Syracuse was a complete disaster.So,the Greeks did not develop tey siege art because they found a better way of solving their differences,until their straditional phalanx fights changed in the Middle 5th century.
Khaire
Giannis

[Ioannis]

Guys, I'd rather seeing you stop talking about the Trojan War as a fact. There's no evidence whatsoever for such an enterprise taking place either in the Late Bronze or the Early Iron Age...

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Sure,but it's a nice way to refer to the period close to the end of Mycenian times or LHIIIC.Most archaeologists agree that the city was attacked,but they are not sure exactly when,from whom and for how long.It's better to say that the Trojan war was the memory of centuries of conflict between two trade centers of the time.And some legends about the Trojan war could well have been what remained as a tail originating in facts.In that manner,the mention to the Trojan Horse in comparison to very similar siege machines of the time used by the Asyrians and Hittites is not completely irrelevant.
Khaire
Giannis

[Paullus Scipio]

The books Lucy refers to are by Duncan Campbell, a fellow member of RAT.
The development of Greco-Roman siege machinery is also covered in "Warfare in the Classical World" by John Warry.

I would endorse Paul Allen's post on the subject ante

[Paullus Scipio]

P.S. The ultimate siege tower ever known was built for the Demetrius Poliorcetes referred to above. It stood around 140 ft (40 metres!! ), over 10 stories. It was armour plated on three sides, and was armed with a variety of ctapults, and mounted on wheels 15 ft (4.5 m) in diameter. It was such a marvel that descriptions of it survive in Diodorus, Plutarch, Vitruvius and the so-called Athenaeus Mechanicus.
An attempted re-construction is illustrated in the book I mentioned.

[D B Campbell]

The ultimate siege tower ever known was built for the Demetrius Poliorcetes referred to above. ... An attempted re-construction is illustrated in the book I mentioned.

Indeed, in [amazon]Warfare in the classical world[/amazon] (p. 90), Paul produced a splendid version of the helepolis used at Rhodes in 304 BC.
I would dispute only one element, namely the means of propulsion:

"It is propelled by a capstan and belt drive, with a suitable mechanical advantage (manned by roughly 200 men). Additional thrust could be provided from the rear."

In [amazon]Besieged. Siege warfare in the ancient world[/amazon] (p.83-87), I have suggested that draught animals were used in conjunction with an elaborate block-and-tackle system to shift the helepolis (and other massive siege machines).

The capstan and belt drive idea was devised by Eric Marsden to explain an obscure phrase in Biton's description of a different helepolis, this time the helepolis of Posidonius (apparently one of Alexander the Great's engineers). However, even if the ancient Greeks knew about the continuous belt-drive, I'm not sure that such a mechanism would have been powerful enough to move a helepolis.

[Paullus Scipio]

Yes, the propulsion system used is a vexed question, and, alas, the ancient written sources are not much help............

I am a little dubious now as to whether manpower could move such a thing (on the other hand it is believed that gangs of men moved the incredibly large and heavy pyramid blocks).
Equally, draught animals are likely to have been a bit unruly under fire from the defenders (even if behind the machine, they would be only partially protected)
Any re-enactors fancy building a siege tower and carrying out some practical experiments......???

[D B Campbell]

And by the Peloponnesian War, Greeks are masters at siegecraft.

I couldn't let that comment go without quoting the Oxford scholar G.B. Grundy, a Thucydides specialist from the early 20thC.
In summing up the lamentable state of 5thC Greek siegecraft, he wrote that the Athenians had "the reputation of the one-eyed among the blind"!

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Yeah,a very nice comment!
What do we know about sieges among the greek sates prior to the Persian Wars?OK,forget Troy and Thebes!I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't have any!What reason had a city to take another one?It couldn't hold it and certainly did not need all its land.Actually,when did the towns start building walls!This in itself explains why the Greeks were so ignorant of siege warfare.
Khaire
Giannis