Siege engine

A machine designed to attack fortified places by breaching walls, hurling projectiles, or helping troops cross defensive barriers.

Battering ram: A heavy beam, often suspended in a frame, used to break gates or walls through repeated blows. Its concentrated impacts could crack masonry or smash a fortified gate.
Ancient Greek artillery: The artillery technologies developed by Greek states, including torsion-powered bolt and stone throwers. Greek engineers developed influential mechanical artillery used against fortified places.
Siege of Syracuse (214–212 BC): A Roman siege of Syracuse during the Second Punic War, remembered for its prolonged resistance. Roman forces faced machines and defenses associated with Archimedes’ engineering.
Concentric castle: A castle with nested defensive walls that expose attackers to successive lines of defense. Its layered walls made a breach in the outer circuit only a first obstacle.
Trebuchet: A counterweight-powered siege engine that launched stones and other projectiles along a high arc. Its long-range missiles could damage walls and structures from outside bowshot.
Dionysius I of Syracuse: A fourth-century BCE ruler who expanded Syracuse’s military power and sponsored engineering for war. His preparations for conflict with Carthage encouraged the development of siege technology.
Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE): The Roman capture and destruction of Jerusalem during the First Jewish–Roman War. Roman siege works and artillery supported the assault on the city’s defenses.
Star fort: A low, angular fortification designed to resist artillery and provide overlapping fields of fire. Its geometry reduced vulnerable wall faces and answered the age of gunpowder siege guns.
Siege tower: A tall movable structure that brought attackers to the height of a fortified wall. It turned a wall’s height into a traversable route for assault troops.
Hellenistic warfare: Military practice among the kingdoms formed after Alexander the Great’s conquests. Its powerful states invested in increasingly large artillery and siege equipment.

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