One contemporary report records bombs – “clay balls with combustible substance in them” – being fired and exploding. A simple rock would do a lot of damage to ancient walls, but missiles could be coated with burning pitch or other unpleasant surprises. They more often used a sling shot to carry their deadly payload than a cup. Twisted ropes within the frame provided the tension that was released to shoot the arm back towards the vertical, where the vertical buffer would halt its progress helping to shoot its missile forward.
The firing arm was pulled down to the horizontal. Two frames, one horizontal and one vertical, provided the base and the resistance against which the firing arm was smashed. Torsion also powered the onager, a precursor of medieval catapults and mangonels that still hadn’t matched their power many centuries later. The word lives on in our modern dictionaries as a root for “ballistics”, the science of projecting missiles. They were standard kit after that, growing in size and becoming lighter and more powerful as metal replaced wood construction.īallista lived on in the eastern Roman military after the fall of the Western Empire. A universal joint that was invented just for this machine helped pick out the target.Ī horse drawn carroballista shown on Trajan’s column.īallistae were on the ships Julius Caesar first sent ashore in his attempted invasion of Britain in 55 BC, after they had helped him subdue the Gauls. They look like giant crossbows, though a stone would often replace the bolt.īy the time the Romans were firing them, ballistae were sophisticated, accurate weapons, said to be capable of picking off single opponents, pinning a Goth to a tree according to one report.Ī sliding carriage was powered forward by the release of twisted animal-sinew ropes, shooting a bolt or rock up to around 500 m. The ballistaīallistae are older than Rome, and probably the product of Ancient Greece’s way with military mechanics. Forget siege as a passive process of starving out an enemy, the Romans were more proactive than that, armed with a plethora of impressive machines to prise open recalcitrant cities. The Romans were also masters of smashing down any defences that got in their way. The wall the Romans built around London was part of our capital’s defence until the 18 th century. Rome hid behind its own Aurelian walls, some of which still stand today. Military victory often meant the taking of a capital city. Almost as soon as mankind started to gather together in the settlements that facilitated civilisation (a word derived from civitas meaning city), he started to build defensive walls around them.Ĭities provided rich pickings for attackers and soon became symbolic rallying points for whole cultures.