2-ANCIENT SIEGE Warfare 700 bc-645 Ad

2 ANCIENT SIEGE
WARFARE,
700 BC–AD 645
Harry Sidebottom
Sieges were like no other kind of warfare in the ancient world.1 Usually unleashed
against urban centers rather than purely military forts or “castles,” they involved
the entire city, much of its territory, and all of its population. Sieges were markedly
bloodier than other kinds of combat, especially in terms of casualties for the victors,
since these were often low in pitched battles. Sieges put great stress on commu-
nities and individuals. Not for nothing could Diodorus Siculus (17.25.4) call such
a fight “the storm of terrors.”
Much evidence survives. A broad genre of military manuals, first in Greek and
then also in Latin, existed from the fourth century BC to the seventh AD and beyond.
The extant examples that deal, in whole or in part, with sieges can be divided
into roughly two types. The first takes the form of general precepts for commanders
1
A splendidly illustrated survey of siege warfare from the Assyrians to the fourth century AD is given
by Campbell (2006)—a popular work underpinned by serious study—republishing material from
(2003a), (2003b), and (2005a). Scholarly overviews are provided by Kern (1999) of the earliest times
to AD 70; by Gilliver (1999: 63–88, 127–160) of Roman siege warfare down to the fourth century AD;
and by Southern and Dixon (1996: 127–167) of the late empire to the sixth century AD. Superb, concise
introductions can be found in contributions to The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare
(Sabin, Van Wees, and Whitby, 2007) by B. Strauss, P. de Souza, C. M. Gilliver, and P. Rance. Rel-
evant specialized studies include, on Greek fortifications, Winter (1971), Lawrence (1979), McNicoll
(1997), and Frederiksen (2011); on Roman fortifications, Johnson (1983), Maloney and Hobley (1983),
and Bishop (2012); on Roman siege works, Davies (2006); and on siege weapons, Marsden
(1969–1971) and Lendle (1975; 1983). Wonderful comparative material for medieval sieges can be
found in the contributions to Corfis and Wolfe (1995) and in Duffy (1975; 1979) for the period AD
1494–1860. Unfortunately The Oxford Handbook of Warfare in the Classical World (edited by Campbell
and Tritle, 2013) arrived too late for any of its articles to be used here.
The Encyclopedia of Ancient Battles, First Edition. Edited by Michael Whitby and Harry Sidebottom.
© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Alesia
Avaricum Aquileia
Massilia
Rome
Numantia Constantinople
Thessalonica
Troy
Torone
Amida
Selinus Halicarnassus Cremea Edessa
Syracuse Plataea
Carthage Dara Nisibis
Rhodes Hatra
Paphos
Dura-Europus
Tyre Jotapata
Gaza Jerusalem
Masada
Petra
0 Miles 500
0 Kilometers 800 Syene
MAP 2.1 Sieges in the classical world.

Ancient Siege Warfare, 700 BC–AD 645 3
and is represented by Aeneas Tacticus, Philo of Byzantium,2 Onasander

(40.1–42.23), Frontinus (Stratagems, Book 3), Polyaenus (Stratagems, 6.3; 7.6.8;
8.23.11; 11.5), Vegetius (Epitoma rei militaris, 4.Pref.–30), and Maurice (Strategicon,
Book 10). The second type was technical works on artillery and siege engineering,
of which we have Philo of Byzantium (Belopoeica), Biton, Athenaeus Mechanicus,
Vitruvius (De architectura, Book 10), Heron of Alexandria (Belopoeica and Cheirobal-
listra), Apollodorus Mechanicus, and two sections of the anonymous De rebus bellicis
(8, 18).3 These manuals vary from the practical (Aeneas Tacticus) to the implausible
(De rebus bellicis), and some combine elements of both.4 The majority of these texts
confusingly combine past with contemporary practices, most notably Vegetius.
More important than the specialist literature are the ancient historians. Most of
the latter included an extended description of a siege. Thucydides on Plataea
(2.71–78; 3.20–24, 51–68) stood at the head of the tradition. Notable followers
included Diodorus Siculus on Rhodes (20.82–88, 91–100); Caesar on Avaricum
(B. Gall. 7.17–32) and Alesia (B. Gall. 7.68–89); Livy on Syracuse (25.23–31); Josephus
on Jotapata (BJ 3.147–397), Jerusalem (BJ 5.47–7.20), and Masada (BJ 7.248–405);
Appian on Numantia (6.46, 76–98); Arrian on Tyre (Anab. 2.16–25); Herodian
on Aquileia (8.2.2–6.4); Ammianus Marcellinus on Amida (19.1.1–8.12); Zosimus
on Cremna (1.69–70); and Procopius on Rome (Wars 5.14.15–17; 19.1–6.7.38).
However, as will be discussed, all of these literary “siege pieces” have to be treated
with some caution (see “Development,” “Surrender, starvation, and suicide,” and
“Gods and mortals”).
In the late empire, barbarian attacks on numerous Roman cities encouraged
descriptions of sieges by several Christian writers, including Pseudo-Zachariah
(7.3–4) and Pseudo-Joshua (50–53) on Amida in AD 502/503 (see also Proc. Wars
1.7.14–15), John of Ephesus on Dara in AD 573 (Wars eccl. 6.5), the Miracles of Saint
Demetrius (nos. 5, 6, 8) on Thessalonica’s various sieges in the late sixth and early
seventh centuries AD, and Theodore Syncellus’ Homily on the Siege of Constantinople
and the account of the same event in the Chronicon Paschale (pp. 715–726). These
writers operated at a far less elevated literary level than the historians in the pagan
tradition, and any debt they owed to Thucydides was indirect. They tended to
emphasize the sins and negligence of many of the defenders—contrasted with
the virtues of the occasional, often already dead and beatified, individual—and
stress both the miraculous and the perfidy and savagery of the barbarian attackers.
The pathos of the victims’ position—so nearly saved, then such a terrible fate—was
2
Two extant sections from Philo’s Mechanical Encyclopaedia, the Poliorcetica (general advice for siege
commanders) and the Belopoeica (instructions on constructing artillery) (see section “Development”),
are usually published together by modern editors as a single book called Poliorcetica (Campbell,
2006: 99).
3
Ps.-Hyginus, On Fortifying a Camp, is also relevant. Particularly important studies of the technical
literature are Whitehead (1990; 2010) and Whitehead and Blyth (2004).
4
The latest editor redeems Apollodorus by arguing anything that is implausible is a later interpolation
(Whitehead, 2010: 29–31).
4 General Topics
played up. Despite their moral and practical failings, in John of Ephesus it takes no
fewer than four mischances to finally doom the inhabitants of Dara.
Sieges by their nature are more likely to have left archeological traces than land
battles, let alone naval fighting. Important classical sites include Paphos on Cyprus,
Numantia in Spain, Alesia in Gaul, Masada in Judaea, Dura-Europos on the
Euphrates, and Cremna in Pisidia. As can be seen, for a few sites (Numantia, Alesia,
Masada, and Cremna) we have both literary and archeological material. Such cases
bring enhanced possibilities for understanding, but also problems. There is a dan-
ger that the excavators might have misinterpreted the archeological evidence to fit
the literary material,5 and even that their reconstruction might have been influ-
enced by a desire to fit modern ideological intentions.6
Development
While open battle was a relatively low-technology business in the classical world,
the opposite was true of siege warfare, which was both at the limits of logistics and
at the cutting edge of applied technology, often in imagination veering into the
realms of fantasy. There is thus a paradox that, despite the intellectual efforts
invested over a millennium and a half, the classical cultures made only two signif-
icant advances in siege warfare: the invention of torsion artillery in the fourth cen-
tury BC and the introduction of traction artillery in the sixth century AD, and the
latter was not an indigenous creation but was adopted indirectly from the Chinese
cultural sphere.
The very exuberance of the literary fantasies might have put off those who saw
themselves as realists, discouraging innovation and inducing complacency. In the
first century AD, Frontinus thought engines of war had long since reached their lim-
its, and he saw no hope of improvements (Strat. 3, Intro.).
The Greeks and Romans liked to think of an epic siege near the start of their
histories. For the Greeks, this was ten years camped before Troy. For the Romans,
most suspiciously, this was another ten years, this time besieging the Etruscan
town of Veii. In reality both were slow to develop the techniques of siege warfare.
Although at times they built massive defensive walls,7 there is no evidence that
the Greeks possessed any sophisticated siege weaponry or skills before the fifth
century BC. In Homer the “siege” of Troy amounts to a series of battles on the open
plain between the city and the invaders’ camp. When the combatants turned to
assault either of these fortified positions it was in the most primitive way. Three
times the god Apollo beat back Patroclus as he tried to climb the angle of Troy’s
5
E.g. Dobson (2008) on Adolf Schulten at Numantia.
6
E.g. Ben-Yehuda (2002) on Yigael Yadin at Masada.
7
Frederiksen (2011) makes a good case that Archaic Greek defenses were more common than pre-
viously thought.
wall, before the hero abandoned his fourth attempt (Il. 16.698–711). In book 12 of
the Iliad, when the Trojans attack the Greek camp, they either try to climb the
palisade (e.g. 387) or tear it down with improvised levers or their bare hands
(256–261), before, helped by Zeus, Hector smashes the gate in with a thrown stone
(445–462). When they return to the attack in book 15, Apollo kicks in the Greek
ditch before wrecking the defenses like a small boy smashing sand castles with his
hands and feet (355–364). Notoriously, in the end Troy falls to a trick.
The Persian forces that took Greek city after city while crushing the “Ionian
Revolt” (499–494 BC) were equipped with all bar one of the siege techniques known
in the classical world. As well as the relatively simple devices of scaling ladders,
battering rams, and covering fire of arrows, slingshots, and hand-hurled weapons,
they deployed siege ramps, mobile towers, and undermining. These were no new
experiments. The Persians had inherited them from the Assyrians, who had
brought these techniques together in the 700s BC.8
The Greeks had increasing contacts with the Near Eastern world from the 700s
BC and some of the Greek peoples were directly attacked by societies with high
siege capacities: from the east by the Persians and from the west by the
Carthaginians, both beginning in the late 500s.Yet the first Greek siege “machines”
only seem to appear in 440, when the Athenians deployed what were probably
simple rams, possibly with some sort of protective covering, in an attack on the
island of Samos (in classical Greek, mechanai could mean in this context anything
from a simple ladder to the most complex of city-taking hardware).9 Various factors
can be canvassed to explain this slow technological uptake by the Greeks.
First was manpower. Siege warfare called for large numbers. For example, it has
been calculated that building a siege ramp big enough to overtop a wall 22 meters
high would take 9,500 men working 12 hours a day for five days (in other words,
570,000 man-hours).10 The Persian empire could deploy almost limitless numbers
of subject levies. Carthaginian forces being mainly mercenary, they could deploy as
many as that wealthy city could pay. The total population of the typical classical
city-state, a Greek polis, or Rome before the third century BC was small, a few thou-
sand at most. The second factor in the slow technological progress of the Greeks
was the acceptability or otherwise of the high rates of casualties inevitable when
attempting to storm a city. The “civic militarism” of classical city-states demanded
that citizen lives were not thrown away wholesale. The same did not necessarily
apply when the Persian king of kings surveyed his expendable subjects or a
Carthaginian general considered his less valuable mercenaries. Third was logistic
8
Assyrian siege techniques are depicted on the famous reliefs in the British Museum; see Tallis (2008:
57, 63).
9
On Athenian rams of 440 BC see Winter (1971: 307). On meanings of mechanai see Van Wees
(2004: 139).
10
On man hours for ramps see Kern (1999: 18).
6 General Topics
capacity. Persia and Carthage had the ability to supply armies running into tens of
thousands. Before the second half of the fifth century BC, no classical city had the
resources or the infrastructure to do the same. The fourth and final factor was, as so
often in classical battle, the influence of the poetry of Homer.11 As we have seen,
the Iliad, the “bible” of the classical cultures, only included the most primitive
forms of siege-fighting, and even that infrequently. A feeling always remained that
sophisticated siege techniques, in contrast to open battle, were somehow unfair,
not a true proof of courage and manhood (which, of course, were really the same
thing!). There were proud boasts that Sparta remained unfortified throughout the
classical period and that no walls were built to defend Rome between the “Servian
Wall” of the mythical king in the mid-sixth century BC and that of the emperor
Aurelian in the late third century AD. Julius Caesar imagined that the Gallic leader
Vercingetorix cheered up his men after the Gauls had lost the siege of Avaricum by
pointing out that siege-fighting was not a fair fight (B. Gall. 7.29).
It is probably no accident that the first Greeks that we hear of using mechanai
against walls were the Athenians in 440 BC. From its formation in 478/477 BC,
the Delian League gave the Athenians access to greater military resources and man-
power than had been available to any Greek city previously. Military force based
around a fleet made logistics easier (it was always easier to move bulk goods by
water than by land). It was precisely in the 440s BC that the Delian League ceased
to be referred to as “the Athenians and their allies” and became “the Athenians and
those they rule.” This change did not just relate to expendable “subjects”; Athenian
imperialism may have changed attitudes to the acceptability of Athenian citizen
casualties. Thucydides puts a famous funeral speech for the Athenians who died
in the first year of the Peloponnesian War into the mouth of Pericles (2.34–46).
The custom of the annual public funeral speech, the Epitaphios, was said to go back
to 464 BC, although we have no evidence for any before that of Pericles, and was
self-consciously unique to Athens. On one level it mourned the dead; on another it
regularized war casualties and may to some extent have readied the Athenians for
more of the same.
The most significant innovation in siege technology that occurred between
750 BC and AD 650 was part of the process that removed the gap between the clas-
sical cultures and the Near Eastern ones in what are sometimes called poliorcetic
endeavors. Sometime around 400 BC, probably at the court of Dionysius I, the
Greek tyrant of Syracuse in Sicily, artillery was invented. This seems to have been
relatively simple: in essence, little more than an arrow- or bolt-shooting large cross-
bow relying on the energy in the tension of its pulled-back arms. The next step
probably was made some 50 years later at the court of Philip II, king of Macedon,
the father of Alexander the Great. This was “torsion” artillery, where the energy
was supplied by two vertical springs of twisted animal sinew or hair (the
11
On Homer retarding Greek siege techniques see Lendon (2005: 160–161).
FIGURE 2.1 A reconstruction of a piece of torsion artillery with two vertical springs.
Source: © Ermine Street Guard.
latter usually horse but sometimes human). In essence the same basic type of tor-
sion artillery could be designed to shoot arrows or stones.
It is no surprise that the two steps forward most likely happened at the courts of
expansionist monarchs. Dionysius and Philip had the wealth to attract the innova-
tive engineers to design the weapons and the manpower to make and utilize them.
The first manuals designed as guides to siege warfare appear in the fourth
century BC. The earliest surviving example is Aeneas Tacticus, How to Defend a City
under Siege.
The Romans were forced to become sophisticated in sieges in the course of the
First Punic War (264–241 BC) as they struggled with Carthage for control over the
island of Sicily. Although arranged on an ad hoc basis by individual generals, they
retained this ability throughout the rest of the republic. As part of his complete
reorganization of the armed forces, the first emperor, Augustus (31 BC–AD 14),
ordered that each now permanent and professional legion should have its own
engineers and artillery. This system lasted until Constantine the Great
(AD 306–337) rearranged Rome’s forces. Henceforth, although supplemented by
8 General Topics
local manufacture where needed, artillery was intended to be provided by specialist

state factories and may have been primarily employed by specialist artillery
legions.12
After Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia (334–330 BC), it appears that Hel-
lenistic Greek and, after the First Punic War, Roman republican armies enjoyed
some advantage in siege-fighting over all contemporary cultures with which they
were in contact, with the exception of Carthage (down to its destruction in 146 BC).
It is axiomatic among modern scholars that the Romans of both the principate
and late empire enjoyed an unbridgeable superiority in siege-fighting over all con-
temporary cultures except Sassanid Persia. While there is truth in this, some clas-
sical habits of mind make it hard to decide how much. After Thucydides had
written up the siege of Plataea, all self-respecting “classicizing” historians—the
majority—liked to show off their paces with a derivative but rival “siege piece.”
As some siege mechanai were used at Plataea, there was an impetus to credit them
to barbarians, who in reality never had them. Conversely, the deeply engrained
ideology that barbarians were stupid, irrational, and incapable of change encour-
aged historians to ignore any advances, technological or otherwise, made by other
cultures, and thus to write any real barbarian siege engines out of history. Modern
scholars seem to stress the first of these literary trends while seldom mentioning
the second.
In the late empire barbarians took lots of Roman towns. This is usually explained
in a variety of ways. The towns were taken by surprise, trickery, or treachery or
they were starved out. They were not defended. They did not really fall, only the
suburbs being sacked.13 Barbarian siege weapons beyond simple rams and ladders,
if they are not dismissed as a classicizing fantasy, are seen as occasionally being built
by Roman deserters and then inefficiently used by their barbarian owners. This
overlooks certain things. Odd as it seems to us, there were always Roman deser-
ters, some even into besieged Jerusalem in AD 70. The inefficient use of siege equip-
ment can be just a cliché of the “stupid barbarian.” Artillery seems to have been
quite easy to use. Josephus says that the Jews at Jerusalem were unskilled at first
but that practice made them proficient.14
The gap in siege expertise between Rome and its enemies seems to some degree
to have closed in the late empire. From the third century AD, Roman armies no
longer built marching camps or walls of circumvallation. In either the third or
the fourth century, torsion artillery constructed with two vertical springs was
12
For Roman developments see a brief mention in Marsden (1969–1971: 174–198) and on the late
empire, although controversial, Chevedden (1995: 131–173). At some point in the first century AD,
the Romans replaced wooden artillery frames with metal; to call this “the Roman artillery revolution”
(Campbell, 2003a: 37) seems excessive.
13
On siege (in)capacity of barbarians see Johnson (1983: 67–81) and Elton (1996: 82–86).
14
Wolff (2009) collects the evidence for deserters from republican armies. On ease of use of artillery
see Elton (1996: 105 n.45). On Jewish artillery, Jos. BJ 5.267–268, 359 mentions 28 days of practice in
the siege.
FIGURE 2.2 A reconstruction of a piece of torsion artillery with one horizontal spring.
Source: © Ermine Street Guard.
replaced with the easier-to-construct-and-use—and thus easier for barbarians to

employ—type with one horizontal spring.
From the early fourth century AD, legions no longer had their own artillery.
Ammianus describes two legions at Amida in AD 359 as useless at siege-fighting
(19.5.2). Vegetius complained that in his day (late fourth or fifth century AD) troops
no longer carried entrenching tools (Mil. 1.21.25). By the sixth century the use of
torsion artillery may have become quite rare. On the other hand, barbarians very
occasionally were innovators. It was some Huns who at the siege of Petra in AD 550
thought up a light protected ram “such as had never been conceived by anyone
else, Romans or Persians since men have existed, although there have always been
and are now great numbers of engineers in both countries.” Much more
importantly, it was the Avars who in AD 586 at Thessalonica introduced into Med-
iterranean and European warfare, from the Chinese cultural sphere, the traction-
powered single-arm stone thrower, which was both more powerful and easier to
construct and use than earlier stone-throwing artillery; it would become the dom-
inant siege weapon until the medieval trebuchet was eclipsed by the rise of gun-
powder artillery.15
15
On Huns see Proc. Wars 8.11.22–34 (including the quote) and Rance (2007: 359–362), the latter of
whom can also be consulted for material on the Avars.
10 General Topics
Inhabitants of the Roman empire were happy with the idea of a complete tech-
nological gulf between them and the outside world. Herodian ludicrously claimed
that it was not until Roman deserters taught them how that the Parthians learned to
fight hand to hand (3.4.7–9). It may be that barbarian relative inadequacies at siege
warfare had less to do with expertise than a lack of the strong political control nec-
essary to mobilize large numbers and vast amounts of material. It may be signif-
icant that the barbarians, who it is accepted were often successful in besieging
towns, were the autocratic empires of the Huns and the Avars—empires that
had both wealth and large numbers of expendable subject levies. Other barbarians
may have been in a position similar to the Archaic Greeks: lacking in logistics and
manpower and having a culture where openly risking large numbers of casualties
was unacceptable.
Under the walls
There were three ways to get into a defended town: over, through, or under the
walls. There were two main methods of attack under the walls. At Dura-Europos,
the Persian besiegers dug a tunnel and hollowed out the ground under a section of a
wall and a tower (numbered 19 by the excavators). Setting fire to the pit props was
meant to bring down the defenses and create a breach through which troops could
enter the city. In this case it did not work. The defenses merely dropped about a yard
or so vertically as the earth embankments on either side held them, preventing them
from toppling over. A minor variant on this is another mine at Dura-Europos (no. 2),
which successfully brought down tower 14, not to create a breach but to prevent the
tower being used as an artillery platform. Yet another mine (no. 4) represents the
other main reason for attackers to dig tunnels. Taller and wider than the others,
it was intended to go under the walls and allow Persian troops to emerge directly
into Dura-Europos. It stops short of the wall where a Roman countermine enters it.
The defenders possibly won this underground fight.16
There were other potential ways of getting under the walls. Cyrus the Great is
said by Herodotus to have diverted the Euphrates so that as the water level fell
his men could enter Babylon along the riverbed under the walls. At Sicyon two con-
spirators entered via the bed of a torrent. Rivers could be an aid to the defenders. If
the river ran on one or more sides of the town, it could serve as a moat. Obviously it
supplied water; at Dura-Europos, the excavators said that the water (probably car-
ried up by hand from the Euphrates) was the color of “weak coffee.” Frontinus
claimed that when Hannibal was besieging Casilinum the Romans floated supplies
down river to the garrison. But rivers could also be a source of weakness. As the
Tiber ran through Rome, Belisarius fixed an iron chain across it to prevent the Goths
bypassing the walls by boat and to protect the floating mills that were replacing the
16
Cf. James (2004: 34–37).
water mills driven by the aqueducts on the Janiculum. Using a river to undermine a
section of mudbrick walls was a trick used as far apart as Mantinea in 385 BC by the
Spartans and Nisibis in AD 350 by the Sassanid Persians. Diverting rivers to either cut
off the water supply or demolish walls was recommended by Philo of Byzantium in
his third-century BC theoretical guide to siege warfare, the Poliorcetica.17
Anywhere water flowed into or out of a town could be exploited by attackers.
The first action of the Goths besieging Rome in AD 537 was to cut off the flow of
water in the aqueducts. Among the first actions of Rome’s defender, Belisarius, was
to fill in the aqueducts to prevent the besiegers using them to infiltrate the city. As
they emptied into the Tiber in the midst of the city, Belisarius did not have to take
any measures concerning the sewers. Julius Caesar got the Gallic town of Uxello-
dunum to surrender by digging to the source of the town’s one spring and diverting
its waters.18
Contrary to popular belief, Greek and Roman cultures did not despise manual
labor. The problem came if you were doing such work, indeed any work, for pay,
with the consequences that held for your loss of self-sufficiency. Taking pay for
military service did not necessarily have the same damaging consequences. The
hard manual work involved in a siege could actually have been reassuringly
homely for many combatants. The majority of Greek hoplites and Roman repub-
lican legionaries were drawn from farming families that worked the land them-
selves. Professional legionaries of the principate took pride in their skill and
speed in construction works in peacetime as well as during war. Hard labor was
fine in the open air. Working underground was a very different matter. This
was not the hard-body-producing dignity of agriculture. Instead this was both bar-
baric and servile (and as ever the two went together well). Skill in mining was held
to be the province of Gauls and of Thracian tribes such as the Bessi. The Athenian
mines at Laurium were worked by slaves. Condemnation to the mines in the
Roman empire was thought to be equivalent to a long-drawn-out death sentence.19
There was another sense in which a Greek or Roman soldier in a mine was pro-
foundly in an abnormal place. Odysseus may have sailed to Hades, but usually the
subterranean world was the place of the dead and the gods. Then as now, grave-
yards were supernatural places. A scattering of their contents shows that the graves
17
Rivers: on Babylon, see Hdt. 1.191 (see Mayor, 2003: 108 on other versions of this story); on Sicyon,
see Xen. Hell. 4.4.7; on Dura, see Hopkins (1979: 29); on Casilinum, see Front. Strat. 3.14.2; on Rome,
see Proc. Wars 5.19.25–26; on Mantinea, see Campbell (2005a: 20); on Nisibis, see Whitby (1998: 196);
Philo Pol. 4.8. The idea of poisoning rivers seems to have been mythical, though Mayor (2003:
100–103) disagrees.
18
Water channels: on Rome, see Proc. Wars 5.19.13; 18 (cf. the Persians, besieged at Petra, hiding two
water pipes below the obvious one in a trench: Proc. Wars 8.12.21–27). On the archeological evidence
for the defense of Greek water channels, see Lawrence (1979: 270–272). On Uxellodunum, see Caes.
B. Gall. 8.41–42.
19
On attitudes of hoplites to construction work and mining, see Ober (1991: 177–184). On Gauls see
Caes. B. Gall. 7.22. On Bessi see Veg. Mil. 2.11; 4.24.
12 General Topics
of the necropolis outside town had been dug through by some of the mines at
Dura-Europos. Natural caves were often associated with the gods and unworldly
prophesy. Mithraism was a popular religion in the Roman army of the first three
centuries AD. Its rites, like those of many “mystery” religions, were conducted
underground in what were called “caves.” Sometimes these were real caves,
and sometimes subterranean rooms decorated to resemble natural caves. Agathias
the historian does not tell us how the soldiers felt when ordered by the Byzantine
general Narses to start their tunnel undermining a Gothic fort in the ancient cave of
the Sibyl at Cumae. Christianity had not removed the conceptual link between the
subterranean and the otherworldly. According to Evagrius, at Edessa in AD 544 the
inflammable material in the Christian defenders’ mine under the attackers’ siege
ramp would only light once holy water had been sprinkled on it.20
There were probably two strategies in carrying out siege-mining. The first, dig
fast and hope to avoid visual or aural detection by the besieged, increased the risks
of cave-ins and of the tunnel going off course. One could minimize these risks by
digging slowly and carefully. But of course this increased the likelihood of detection
and intervention by the besieged. Siege-mining was not like civilian tunneling. In
the latter, vertical shafts were sunk and then joined up. This obviously was not the
case in siege mines. These were dug “blind.” The miners did not know exactly
where they were going or what they would encounter. It is interesting to note that
in the tunnels of Cu Chi in the Vietnam War the Vietcong, which had built the
tunnels, actually using exactly the technique just described for classical civilian tun-
nels, in knowing the layout held a huge psychological advantage over the American
“tunnel rats” who did not. Although some of the latter wanted the action, the
unknown quality of the tunnels “generated claustrophobia, fear and physical
fatigue.”21
In a place they did not belong, bathed in sweat, working hard with picks or
passing baskets, illuminated by flickering torches or lamps, ancient siege miners
had much to fear. Although at times they may have crouched in silence listening
(like a U-boat crew waiting for a depth charge), normally the sound of their own
activities would have made whatever they encountered come as a surprise. The
omnipresent danger of a natural cave-in was not all that might happen. Defenders
would be on the alert for evidence of mines. Visually they would look for the
mine’s entrance or spoil heaps. The technique of using a bronze shield laid on
the ground as a listening device was so well known that a parody of it could
be used as a plot device in Iamblichus’ romantic novel A Babylonian Story. At
any moment an opening might appear in the walls or ceiling and unpleasant
20
On graves at Dura see Du Mesnil du Buisson (1936: 200). On the cave of the Sibyl see Agathias Hist.
1.10 (now taken over by Christianity, the Sibylline Oracles were still believed to be divinely inspired:
Proc. Wars 5.24.28–37). On Edessa see Whitby (1998: 199).
21
On civilian tunneling see Landels (1978: 38–40). On military mining see Davies (2006: 117–124). On
Cu Chi see Mangold and Penycate (1985: 26 (quote), 74 (method)).
and dangerous things invade the miners’ cramped space. Usually it would be
armed men. At Dura-Europos, in a tunnel that had been deliberately collapsed
during the siege, the excavators found the remains of a large number of soldiers,
still with much of their equipment and personal possessions. One man lay on his
back, his mail shirt pulled up around his chest. Some two meters from his feet
toward the town, in a terrible jumble filling the width of the tunnel, lay the
remains of 16 or 18 more men. Modern reconstructions vary: did the Sassanid
attackers or the Roman defenders fire the mine and entomb the warriors? Were
those unfortunates alive or dead when entombed? Although the counterminers
might not always win, they, unlike their opponents, at least were prepared for a
fight at that moment. Other things might emerge when the walls gave. Roman
miners were driven back at Ambracia by smoke and at Avaricum by sharp stakes,
boiling pitch, and heavy stones. At Themiscyra bees, bears, and other wild ani-
mals were said to be introduced into the tunnels. At Massilia the first the miners
knew of the inhabitants’ latest defensive measure was when they breached the
side of a deep moat. The water poured in and they drowned.22
Over the walls

Lucius Fabius, centurion of the 8th legion, had three of his men hoist him up onto
the Gauls’ low wall at Gergovia. Alexander’s men needed to drive in pegs to
climb the wall of Multan in India. Once, at Jerusalem, we hear of a wall being
polished to discourage climbing. Usually the missiles of the defenders prohibited
such an obvious method of getting over a wall. Climbing only had a chance
where the defenses, probably a natural cliff as well as or instead of a wall, were
so daunting that the garrison did not bother to guard them adequately. Such was
the case when Cyrus’ men ascended into Sardis, Alexander’s into the Rock of
Sogdiana, and Marius’ into an unnamed fortress near the Muluccha river in North
Africa.23
Siege ladders had to be the right length. Obviously too short was no good, but
too long was also bad. If a ladder overtopped the wall, it made it easier to push
away. If it was erected at too flat an angle, it was more likely to break. Not all
of those thrown from a ladder were incapacitated. The aged Byzantine general
Bessas survived and returned to the fray at Petra. But many were not so lucky.
22
Ib. A Babylonian Story 3 (Phot. 74a). Bad things in tunnels: on Dura see Du Mesnil du Buisson (1936:
188–199) and James (2004: 34–37); on Ambracia see Philo Pol. 21.28; on Avaricum see Caes. B. Gall.
7.22; on Themiscyra see App. 12.11; on Massilia see Vit. De arch. 10.16.11–12.
23
Climbing: on Gergovia see Caes. B. Gall. 7.3; on Multan see Kern (1999: 225); on Jerusalem see Jos.
BJ 5.239; on Sardis see Hdt. 1.84–86; on Sogdiana see Kern (1999: 221); on the Maluccha River see Sall.
BJ 92–94; Front. Strat. 3.9.2–3.
14 General Topics
It was hard to protect yourself with a shield both while climbing and when getting
off a ladder.24
A slower and more labor intensive way of getting over a wall, and one much
favored by the Romans of the principate, was to build a siege ramp of earth, wood,
and stones. The famous archeological remains of the one at Masada give an atypical
impression. The ramp appears to be enormous. But it was built on top of a natural
spur of rock, and, the majority of the constructed ramp having eroded, it is mainly
the geological feature that visitors now see. Most siege ramps were much smaller,
like the one built by the Persians to attack the wall between gates 14 and 15 at Dura-
Europos. The defenders tried hard to stop a ramp achieving its objective. Once in
range, workers on the ramp were exposed to continuous missiles and from the start
to the ever present possibility of a violent sortie. The defenders might dig tunnels
under the ramp from within their own walls. Then they might either, as at Plataea,
remove soil from the base of the ramp to prevent its growing or, as at Jerusalem
and at Paphos in Cyprus, fire a series of hollowed-out chambers hoping that the
wood in the ramp would burn and the structure would implode. Another tactic,
one again employed at Plataea, was to build up the height of the wall at which
the ramp was aimed.25
Another way of getting over the wall was to employ siege towers. These were
tall wheeled structures moved by manpower, or sometimes oxen. The wooden
front and sides—the back might be left open for light and ventilation—were further
protected by raw hides or even metal sheeting. The lower floors of Hellenistic ones
contained stone-throwing artillery and the upper floors bolt-shooting machines.
The Romans at times stationed a ram on one of the lower floors. This can be seen
in a relief panel from the Arch of Septimius Severus illustrating an assault on a
Parthian town (see Figure 2.3).26
The real purpose of a siege tower was its bridge. This was either a drawbridge let
down or a boarding bridge pushed or swung out onto the enemy battlements. In
the top left of Figure 2.3, Roman soldiers are crowded together as they wait to
assault the Parthian wall to the right.
The defenders might try to destroy the towers either by throwing incendiary
missiles from the battlements or via a sally out from the walls to set fire to them.
Artillery might attempt to knock them apart. To prevent such interference when he
was attacking Utica, Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, hung prisoners on his siege
tower. Necessity forced the Uticans to shoot and kill their own kin. Towers needed
24
Siege ladders: on length see Kern (1999: 12); on pushing away see Aeneas Tacticus 36.1–2; on Bessas
see Proc. Wars 8.11.39–53; and on the difficulty of protecting and climbing see Jos. BJ 6.223–225.
25
Siege ramps: on construction see Kern (1999: 18, 52, 105) and Davies (2006: 97–116), the latter of
whom points out that some siege mounds were not intended to reach the walls, instead being
designed to provide elevated platforms for artillery; at Masada see Ben-Yehuda (2002: 99–104); at
Jerusalem see Jos. BJ 5.469–472; at Paphos see Maier and Karageorghis (1984: 186–203). See also
Ps.-Joshua 50–53 (tr. pp. 54–55) and Ps.-Zach. 7.4 (tr. pp. 153–154) on the mound at Amida.
26
Campbell (2003b) contains a good introduction to the design of siege towers.
FIGURE 2.3 Relief on the Arch of Septimius Severus, Forum Romanum, Roman Forum,
Rome, Lazio, Italy.
Source: imageBROKER/Alamy.
flat and hard ground. Defenders might try to undermine them. Vegetius recom-
mends this, and it is sometimes thought to have been attempted at Paphos. At
Rhodes, sewage was said to have been pumped into the path of Demetrius the
Besieger’s great “City-Taker,” Helepolis, which sank into the resulting quagmire.
Towers might sink under their own weight, as did those of Alexander the Great
at Gaza and those of Flamininus at Atrax, or even collapse altogether, as did
one of Titus’ at Jerusalem.27 A panel from the Column of Marcus Aurelius shows
a Germanic siege tower struck by lightning called down by Marcus Aurelius from
the gods (see Figure 2.4).
We seldom hear of members of an escalading party suffering from vertigo. An
exception is Polybius’ account of some of Scipio Africanus’ men at New Carthage
becoming dizzy from climbing so far and thus being easily knocked off their lad-
ders. The rarity of such stories may in part be due to the usual general’s-eye view,
top-down style of battle narratives in classical historiography. Yet it might also be
that men were selected for an escalade who did not suffer from vertigo, or, as we
27
On Agathocles’ strategy see Diod. Sic. 20.54.2–7. On incapacitated towers see Veg. Mil. 4.20; on
Paphos see Campbell (2006: 20–24); on Rhodes see Vit. De arch. 10.16.7; on Gaza see Curt. 4.6.9;
on Atrax see Livy 32.18.3; on Jerusalem see Jos. BJ 5.291–295.
16 General Topics
FIGURE 2.4 Column of Marcus Aurelius.

Source: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Rome.
will see in the next section, that when the attack went in the party had more press-
ing things to worry about.28
Through the walls
The famous Roman testudo (tortoise) formation, where the shields were over-
lapped like tiles, was designed for siege-fighting. At Jerusalem a unit advanced
to the walls in testudo and under its shelter some of the men levered out four stones
with crowbars and their hands. The wall remained standing. But that night, wea-
kened by this effort, the effects of a ram, and an earlier defensive tunnel, the wall
28
On vertigo see Polyb. 10.13; cf. Jos. BJ 7.283; Amm. Marc. 19.5.4.
suddenly collapsed. Sappers working with picks, sledge hammers, and crowbars on
the base of a wall or on a gate probably were the earliest method of getting through
defenses. They always needed protection from missiles shot and dropped from
above. Mobile sheds were commonly used. Their rustic names—such as “vines”
or “mice”—reflect the agricultural origins of so many soldiers. Probably the most
elaborate known was constructed by Caesar’s army outside Massilia. First the
attackers built an immobile brick tower and then from there a wooden gallery
was pushed on rollers to the walls.29
One of the earliest and most ubiquitous pieces of siege machinery was the
ram. In its simple form it was a length of wood, one end hardened by fire
or reinforced with iron, carried by a group of men. Most rams of classical times
were suspended by ropes or chains from a wooden framework and were swung
either by manpower or a system of pulleys. One variant was the “bore” or
“drill,” which had a sharp point designed to make a series of holes, especially
in mud-brick walls. Another was a falx or hook intended to tear out stones. Just
like sappers, the ram and its crew needed protection, usually some form of
mobile shed.30
Rams acquired symbolic connotations. An example of the metal head of a ram
was found at Olympia. Probably dating to around 450 BC, it may have been ded-
icated from some of the booty taken from the Carthaginians. The Jews nicknamed
one of Titus’ rams at Jerusalem “Victor.” At the siege of Bezabde in AD 360, the
Romans used a ram that had been used 100 years earlier at Antioch by the Persians,
who had then probably dedicated it at Carrhae. Although classical sieges never
developed the elaborate formal rules of early modern European sieges, for the
Romans and probably for the Greeks, the moment when a ram first touched
the walls could be regarded as a turning point. Caesar said to one tribe of Gauls
that he would be merciful provided they surrendered before his ram touched
the walls of their town.31
There were a range of countermeasures against a ram available to defenders.
They might pad the wall. Aeneas Tacticus recommended “sacks filled with chaff,
bags of wool, fresh ox-hides either inflated or filled with something,” while Vege-
tius went for “quilted blankets and mattresses.” At Amida, bundles of rushes were
used. Defenders might try to lasso the ram with ropes or chains, and make it
harmless by hauling its point skywards, as did the defenders of Plataea.
29
On sappers see Jos. BJ 6.23–28; on rustic names see Roth (2006: 56, n.86); on galleries see Caes.
B. Civ. 2.9–10.
30
Campbell (2003b) contains a good introduction to rams. Whitehead and Blyth (2004: 174–175) over-
state the differentiation between rams and bores; see also Campbell (2005b). On falx see Veg.
Mil. 4.14.
31
On rams: at Olympia see Campbell (2003b: 4); on the “Victor” see Jos. BJ 5.299; on the hundred-
year-old ram see Amm. Marc. 20.11.11; on rams touching the wall see Caes. B. Gall. 1.32; see also
discussion by Gilliver (1999: 138–140) but cf. Campbell (2006: 162–163). On “rules” for early modern
sieges see Duffy (1979: 249–250).
18 General Topics
Alternatively they might try to destroy or damage it by dropping either heavy or

combustible things on it. As always there was the option of sallying forth, torches
in hand.32
Stone-throwing artillery had two primary targets: personnel and other siege
weapons. But it could be deployed against fixed assets. It could strip away battle-
ments. Although some modern scholars doubt it, ancient authors claimed that
stone throwers could bring down walls.33
If a breach threatened, the defenders might build what is usually referred to as
a demi-lune, a second wall, often semicircular, behind the endangered one. Occa-
sionally, as at Rhodes, even a third wall might be constructed. After the curtain wall
had fallen, the defenders might use the cover of darkness to try to erect an impro-
vised wall in the breach. Josephus says that at Jerusalem even the bodies of the slain
were used for this purpose.34
Defenders seldom surrendered when a breach was made, and things got no
better for the besieging soldiers. A breach was hard to negotiate: a steep,
jumbled hill of broken building materials. Twice, Josephus tells of members
of the Roman army at Jerusalem who tripped, fell, and were then dispatched
while fighting in the breach. Ladders or gangways of boards usually made life
a little easier. But at Jotapata Josephus ordered that very slippery boiled fenu-
greek be poured on the boards of the attacking Romans: “nobody could stand
upright; some fell on their backs while still on the gangways and were trodden
to death, many tumbled off … and were at the mercy of the Jews.” The same
effect was attempted at Amida in AD 502/503 by throwing strips of ox hide
soaked in vetch and myrrh-oil onto the boards. Ideally the attackers would clear
the breach before attempting an assault, as did the Carthaginians at Selinus. The
defenders of Phthiotic Thebes surrendered when the men of Philip V began to
drag the rubble from the breach.35
Assaulting a breach was as dangerous as escalading via ladder, ramp, or tower.
Lucius Fabius, whom we saw was the first over the wall at Gergovia, did not sur-
vive. The failed attempt of Dionysius I to climb the cliffs of Tauromenium ended
with 600 of his men dead, and most of the rest threw away their equipment as
they scrambled to safety. A small Roman storming party at Jerusalem suffered
100 percent casualties: four dead and eight wounded out of twelve. In such crucial
moments the defenders literally threw everything they had at the attackers,
32
On measures against rams see Aen. Tact. 32.3; Veg. Mil. 4.23; Ps.-Zach. 7.4 (tr. p. 153); Thuc. 2.76.
33
The idea of stone throwers demolishing walls is accepted by e.g. McNicoll (1997: 307–308) and Kern
(1999: 241, 259) and is rejected by e.g. Campbell (2005a: 50).
34
On the third wall, see Diod. Sic. 20.97.3–4. On the use of bodies see Jos. BJ 5.346.
35
At Hatra, Septimius Severus hoped that the town would surrender after a breach was made. He was
disappointed: Cass. Dio 76.12.1–2. On tripping over see Jos. BJ 6.64, 173. On fenugreek see Jos. BJ
3.277–282. On vetch and myrrh-oil see Ps.-Zach. 7.4 (tr. p. 154). On a clear breach see Lawrence
(1979: 42, 65).
including boiling oil, red-hot sand, burning naphtha, the drums of columns, and the
marble bases and chunks of broken-up statues.36
We have no first-person account from the classical world, but the risks of such an
assault in the face of edged weapons changed little over the centuries. In AD 1634 an
imperialist soldier followed the leader of an escalade and
his head was no sooner peeped above the walls, but it seems someone thrust at him
with a halberd and thrust off his bever (helmet); his bever was no sooner off but with
a sword one struck off his head and fell to the ground the head being off the body falls
upon me and there it lies very heavy upon me and blooded me wonderfully that I was
almost smothered with blood.37
Very occasionally classical armies used elephants to assault a breach. It does

not seem to have been a successful tactic. At Megalopolis those of Poly-
perchon, having trodden on spiked doors placed in their path, trampled the
men of their own side. At Numantia those of Nobilior fought bravely until
one was hit on the head by a falling stone. This panicked all of them, and
again they ran amok.38
A classical assault group could be made up of volunteers. Josephus gave a fine
speech to Sabinus, a frail-looking Syrian, who led the attack at Jerusalem that ended
in 100 percent casualties: “rest assured I am quite prepared for failure and have
chosen death with my eyes open.” “Riddled with wounds,” he died. At the siege
of Zama the Romans “each acted according to his own quality, some fought at long
range … others advanced … striving to get to grips with the foe.” At other times the
party was composed of picked men. Titus picked “the thirty best soldiers out of
every century” at Jerusalem. At the unnamed fort by the Malucca river, Marius
selected four centurions and five trumpeters to go with a volunteer. In the Roman
east, dismounted cavalry were sometimes selected, presumably for their heavy
armor, long spears, and high morale.39
Given the dangers, it is no surprise that at times no one would go. At the city of
the Malli tribe, Alexander had to go up when his troops were reluctant, and was
then isolated when the ladders broke as others rushed to follow him. At Jerusalem,
facing a breach and a hastily erected demi-lune behind it, “no one dared to climb
up: for those who lead the way it meant certain death” (Jos. BJ 6.32). At Hatra,
36
Failed assaults: at Tauromenium see Diod. Sic. 14.88; at Jerusalem see Jos. BJ 6.64. Missiles: on oil
see Jos. BJ 6.64; on sand see Diod. Sic. 17.44.1–5; on naphtha see Cass. Dio 76.11.4; on columns see
Veg. Mil. 4.23; on statues see Proc. Wars 5.22.3.
37
First-hand account quoted by Duffy (1975: 97).
38
On Megalopolis see Diod. Sic. 18.71.3–6; on Numantia see App. 6.46. At Camel Fort, Perdiccas used
elephants to try to create a breach in the palisade: Diod. Sic. 18.34.1–5.
39
On volunteers see Jos. BJ 6.56–58; Sall. BJ 52.4–6. On chosen men see Jos. BJ 6.131; Sall. BJ 93.7; cf.
Chariton 7.3. On cavalry in the Roman east see Jos. BJ 3.254 (cavalry may also have been selected
because they played a lesser role, and thus had an easier time, in ordinary siege works).
20 General Topics
Septimius Severus’ European soldiers were so angry that he had recalled them
when a portion of the wall had first been brought down that they refused to assault
the temporary wall built overnight in the breach. When one of his friends said that
if he were given just 550 European troops he would take the town, the emperor
replied, “and where am I to get so many soldiers?” (Cass. Dio 76.12.1–5).
Surprise, tricks, and treachery
There were ways other than an open, contested assault to get inside the walls.
There was surprise. Philo recommended attacking during a stormy night or a pub-
lic festival. Looking at things from the opposite perspective, Aeneas Tacticus cau-
tioned extra care at such times. At Syracuse, the Romans scaled the walls early in
the night after the city’s festival of Artemis. They were unopposed. The guards
were either still drinking or sleeping it off. The Persians gained the walls of Dara
on a cold night when the guards had gone home to eat and drink. Then there was
trickery. Python of Clazomenae captured his hometown by arranging for some
wagons carrying storage jars to arrive at the quietest time of the day. While the
delivery cart stood in the gates, preventing their being shut, some mercenaries
who had been hiding near the walls burst in. And, of course, there was treachery.
It is very striking that Aeneas Tacticus gives more advice on guarding against this
than defeating regular enemy siege works. There could be many motives: ideol-
ogy, attempted self-presentation at the cost of the community, or plain bribery.
Philip II said that no place was impregnable if he could get into it a mule with
a sack on its back.40
In the crucial moments, surprise, trick, and betrayal each put a small number of
men in extreme danger. They were all highly likely to fail, and for the handful of
attackers the price of failure was likely to be high. The Persian party of 70 picked
men who followed a Roman deserter through some unguarded water tunnels into
Amida seem to have perished to the last man, pierced by bolt-shooting artillery or
leaping in desperation from a tower to their deaths. The feelings of the mercenaries
with Temenos the Rhodian as they lay in the dark almost a kilometer from Teos
waiting for a traitor to open the gates would not have been very different from the
forlorn hope experienced by those waiting to climb ladders, enter a tunnel, or
storm a breach.41
40
Surprise: Philo Pol. 4.2 and Aen. Tact. 17.1–6; 22.16–17; at Syracuse see Kern (1999: 264–265); at
Dara see John of Ephesus Hist. eccl. 6.5 (tr. p. 381). On tricks see Aen. Tact. 28.5. On treachery
see Cic. Att. 1.16.12.
41
On failure see Amm. Marc. 19.5.4–6. On fear see Aen. Tact. 18.13; cf. Thuc. 4.110, in which only 7
out of 20 (i.e. 35 percent) of the party dared to enter.
Motivation
What motivated men to run the dreadful risks of an escalade or storming a breach?
First was the hope of reward. At Torone in 423 BC the great Spartan general Brasidas
offered the first man over the wall 30 minae, equivalent to over eight years’ pay for a
hoplite at the time. At Motya in 397 BC, Dionysius I offered 100 minae for the same
feat. For set battle and storming a city, the Romans had a formal system of honors
(one that embedded the ethos of Homer and Virgil in military law): a spear for any-
one who wounded an enemy and a cup for an infantryman or horse-trappings for a
cavalryman who killed and stripped an enemy. Much rarer, for an obvious reason,
was the corona muralis, a crown of gold depicting defensive walls, which was
awarded to the first man onto the enemy defenses. Such decorations, worn at
religious festivals and displayed prominently in the home the rest of the time,
changed a man’s life forever. However, they were not always enough. At Avaricum,
Julius Caesar clearly promised monetary rewards. After the reign of Augustus, the
corona muralis was reserved for officers, centurions, and above, thus becoming rarer
still. So in the principate commanders offered either promotion or hard cash. At all
times a sliding scale of cash might be announced. At the Sogdian Rock, Alexander
offered 12 talents (equivalent to 720 minae) to the first man down to one talent to the
12th. It is telling that at Jerusalem Titus offered rewards to the dependents of those
who were fated to die as well as those who would survive.42
A second thing that got men through the experience was the desire for loot. Fac-
ing dissent, Alexander reminded his men of the great sums that they had acquired
by pay and plunder whenever a city was sacked. Although not a siege, when sack-
ing the Persian capital Persepolis, the Macedonians, “such was their lust for loot,”
fought among themselves, causing fatalities. To explain to the Greeks how they
had been conquered by the Romans, Polybius desired to write about the latter
as the ultimate in systematic organization. This is never more true than in his
description of Roman methods of sacking a town. Not a soldier plunders until
he has the order. Then a set number of each unit, never more than half the army,
collect booty and bring it to the town’s marketplace, where after it has been sold
officers divide it equitably among the troops. For Polybius the motivation of Greek
and Roman soldiers was the same: “most men endure hardship and risk their lives
for the sake of gain.” What differed was that among the former “any man keeps
whatever comes into his hands.” Although some scholars have treated it with sur-
prising respect, Polybius’ description obviously owes more to his ideological out-
look than to objective reality. Indeed, if everything were really distributed so fairly,
the incentive to get inside first would be much reduced. Septimius Severus called
back his troops from the breach at Hatra because if they had gone on to sack the
42
Rewards: at Motya and Torone see Kern (1999: 108); on the corona muralis etc. see Polyb. 6.39 and
Maxfield (1981: 76–79); at Avaricum see Caes. B. Gall. 7.2; on the Sogdian Rock see Arr. Anab. 4.19 but
cf. Philo Pol.; at Jerusalem see Jos. BJ 6.53.
22 General Topics
town its great wealth would have remained in their hands, irrespective of the fact
that Roman law under the principate held that all booty belonged to the emperor,
whereas he would gain it if the town surrendered. Josephus, explaining a particu-
larly ghastly atrocity at the siege of Jerusalem, the disemboweling of deserters on
the rumor of them having swallowed coins, considered that “avarice scorns every
penalty and an extraordinary love of gain is innate in man, nor is any emotion as
strong as covetousness.”43
The desire to rape was another factor that might motivate troops. It is safe to say
classical attitudes to rape were different from modern western ones. The Homeric
gods raped mortals. Some, above all Zeus their king, were serial rapists of boys and
girls. The Romans’ national epic poem, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the patriotic Histories of
Livy included the story of the rape of the Sabine women. Modern scholars argue
that in the classical cultures sex was all about the power to penetrate—that being
“active” rather than “passive” mattered more than the sex of the penetrated.
Whether this was always true or not, in these slave-owning societies male owners
if they wished could have sex with their slaves, either male or female, without con-
sideration of the latter’s willingness. This was not rape, and probably seldom
involved any force, for as the saying went “a slave should not have to wait for
the master’s hand.”
Things seem to have changed over the course of antiquity. In Homeric times,
Nestor straightforwardly advocated rape at the siege of Troy; no Greek should
return home without bedding a Trojan woman. An anecdote about Alexander
points to later ambiguities. When his army sacked Thebes, “a woman of noble birth
and character,” Timocleia, was raped by the leader of a group of Thracians. When
he demanded to know whether she had any gold or silver hidden, she pointed to a
well in her garden. As he bent over to look, she pushed him in, and then dropped
stones on him until he was dead. Brought before Alexander by the Thracians,
Timocleia said she was “the sister of Theagenes who commanded our army against
your father Philip, and fell at Chaeronea fighting for the liberty of Greece.” The
Macedonian “was filled with admiration not only at her words but at what she
had done, and gave orders that she and her children should be freed and allowed
to depart.” Alexander was one of a small group of commanders in antiquity who
were noted for respecting their female captives. Their noted restraint shows that
for most the opposite was the case. After taking New Carthage, Scipio Africanus’
men presented him with a beautiful girl. Scipio said that were he in private life
nothing would please him more than to take her but that as he was a general
he thought it inappropriate. These stories show both that rape was thought to
be normal at the fall of a city and that the practice was problematic. In the story
43
Booty: on Alexander see Arr. Anab. 7.10; on the Macedonians’ fight over it see Diod. Sic. 17.70,
Curt. 5.6.1–8, and Polyb. 10.15–16 (on Polyb.: “a standard procedure,” Kern, 1999: 283; “at best
an unwarranted generalization from a most exceptional episode,” Ziolkowski, 1993: 89); on the lit-
erary topos in general see Paul (1982: 144–155); on Hatra see Cass. Dio 76.12.1 and Jos. BJ 5.558.
of Timocleia, which like the one about Scipio may well be fictional, it is significant
that the rapist is a Thracian. Being relentless gang rapists was one of the charges
Greeks and Romans brought against barbarians. Women were said to have died
after gang rape: by Persians according to Herodotus and by Gauls according to
Pausanias. In the late Roman empire, things became yet more problematic as
Christianity created the role of the virgin bride of Christ and, as barbarians
frequently sacked Roman towns, women, including nuns, frequently were raped.
The issue became important for Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Leo: did a
nun still count as a virgin after being raped? The answer was yes for Augustine and
no for Leo. Various stories were told of large groups of captured nuns or virgins
who avoided such questions by drowning themselves before they could be
violated.44
Comparative evidence might suggest that Greek and Roman warriors used
alcohol to help get them through the fear of combat. “Dutch courage” has been
employed widely by early modern and modern European troops. Yet there is very
little evidence of this for the classical cultures. This lack of evidence might be
explained by three things. First, Greek and Roman men always drank alcohol with
their breakfast, usually watered wine, but beer was sometimes issued to Roman
troops in the northern provinces. A “livener” before combat thus would just be
a question of degree. Second, the Thucydidean, general’s eye view commonly
adopted by classical historians usually would tend to ignore such low-level details
about individuals. Third was the ethnographic cliché originating with Homer and
applicable to any barbarians: that barbarians’ lack of self-control and discipline led
them to spend the night before battle carousing and thus, although this is far less
often explicit, they must have entered battle drunk. So, to admit that one’s own side
was inebriated might have been unwelcome. It seems significant that the very few
explicit mentions of hard drinking just before combat usually involve barbarians
and relate to an assault in a siege. At Syracuse, Dionysius II issued his barbarian
mercenaries a ration of unwatered wine before ordering them into a dawn assault
on some siege works. Quintus Curtius Rufus claims that before making a naval
sortie against Alexander the warriors of Tyre spent the night in “excessive drinking,
and at sunrise they unsteadily boarded their vessels.” At the siege of Halicarnassus,
some Macedonian infantrymen, just two according to Arrian, “warmed with the
44
Rape by gods: it was a commonplace of pagan moralists that the gods behaved in ways that would
be disgraceful for mortals. On Sabine women see Vir. Aen. 8.635–654; Livy, 1.9–13. For modern schol-
arly views on ancient sexuality see Montserrat (2000: 153–181) and Larmour, Miller, and Platter (1998:
3–41) for introductions. On the quoted slave saying see (Ps.-)Lucian, The Ass 42. On Nestor’s advice
see Homer Il. 2.354–356. Stories: on Timocleia’s see Plut. Alex. 12; on Scipio’s see Kern (1999:
346–347). Gang rapists: on the Persians see Hdt. 8.32–33 (cf. Curt. 4.10.29–34); on the Gauls see Paus.
10.22.3–4. On raped nuns see Clark (1993: 73); Ward-Perkins (2005: 13); cf. a pagan novel where a
girl’s mother says that rape by a Thracian was “a disaster but not a disgrace if force was used,” Ach.
Tat. 2.24. On drowning see John of Ephesus Hist. eccl. 6.7 (tr. pp. 387–391).
24 General Topics
drink, each bragging as hard as he could go” staged an impromptu assault of their
own that then sucked in other troops.45
Ethnic dislike, or even racial hatred at times, could be a motivating factor.
Josephus imagines that the Jew Jonathon who paraded before the armies calling
for opponents to face him in single combat was motivated partly by contempt
for the Romans. Here the hatred went both ways. In full view of the defenders,
Roman soldiers crucified Jewish prisoners “in various attitudes as a grim joke.”
Classical sources usually invoke racial hatred and link it to either a perceived atroc-
ity or the desire for loot to explain a massacre after a city has fallen. According to
Arrian, the Macedonians’ rage against the people of Tyre stemmed from the latter’s
cutting the throats of Macedonian prisoners and throwing their bodies into the sea.
At the sack of Jerusalem, Josephus says that Roman discipline could not hold
against the soldiers’ “detestation of the Jews … uncontrollable lust for battle …
and expectation of booty.” If racial hatred was present after the walls fell, it was
unlikely not to have been there as they were taken.46
A final factor pushing men into the breach comes straight from Homer: the
desire to excel, exemplified by Achilles’ wish to always be the best. Assaulting a
gate at Avaricum, Marcus Petronius, a centurion of the 8th legion, called to his
men to save themselves: “it is my fault that you are in this tight corner, because
I was so keen to distinguish myself.” He covered their retreat and fell fighting.
The desire for individual distinction could expand into a desire for group or unit
distinction, into what we might call esprit de corps. After the fall of New Carthage,
there was a dispute over whether a marine or a legionary had been first through the
walls. Josephus tells us of rivalries between the units besieging Jerusalem. When it
came to building engines, none could match the 10th legion. Constructing walls
“there was competition not only between legions but even between cohorts.”
As the speech of Sabinus the Syrian in Josephus shows, the desire to excel went
hand in hand with the desire for rewards, which in turn merged into the concept
of fighting well under the commander’s watchful eye, even being protected by his
divinely ordained luck: “I gladly offer my services, Caesar. I am the first to scale the
45
On alcohol, the comparative evidence can be found in Keegan (1976: 183–184, 245, 333), Holmes
(1985: 244–254), and Ellis (1990: 289–295). Despite the lack of evidence, such is the influence of Kee-
gan that most historians of classical combat follow his “fighting drunk” line without too much reflec-
tion: Hanson (1989: 126–131); Goldsworthy (1996: 261–262); Kern (1999: 206–207). On barbarians
carousing on the night before battle see Homer Il. 8.489–565; 10.418–422; Tac. Ann. 1.65; Tac. Hist.
4.29 (where they enter combat drunk, as it is a night fight); cf. the idea (and often the reality) that in
modern battles between westerners and “others” the latter “must be on drugs”: Poole (2003: 174);
Zucchino (2004: 195). On drink before combat: at Syracuse see Plut. Dion 30; at Tyre see Curt.
4.4.5; at Halicarnassus see Arr. Anab. 1.20 and Diod. Sic. 17.25.5–6; on drunken Huns at the siege
of Rome see Proc. Wars 6.1.28.
46
Ethnic dislike/racial hatred: on Jonathon see Jos. BJ 6.196–179; on Roman crucifixions see Jos. BJ
5.451–452; on massacres see Jos. BJ 6.263; Arr. Anab. 2.24.
wall. I trust my strength and determination will have the benefit of your usual
luck.” As we have seen, they did not.47
House to house
When the walls were taken, normally the siege ended and the sack began. But not
always. Sometimes some of the garrison was able to retreat to a citadel. This might
then require further siege works. At Halicarnassus, having taken the main part of
the town, Alexander the Great decided not to invest the two strongholds that still
held out. Instead he leave a blocking force and moved on.48
Occasionally the urban tissue of the town, especially tall buildings, combined
with the desperation of the defenders to result in house-to-house fighting. Then
as now, this desperate and bloody type of fighting was feared by attackers. Vegetius
recommended the attackers leave a gate unguarded to encourage the enemy to
run. The Persians did just this at Dara in AD 573, but the defenders could not find
the keys and, trapped, returned to the fight.49
When street-fighting broke out, four new factors stacked up against the attack-
ers. The first novelty was verticality. If the attacking soldiers on the streets wanted
to clear buildings, they had to start on the ground floor. Fighting uphill put com-
batants at a disadvantage.
The second factor was the additional numbers that became available to the
defense. Women and children could become combatants. With women and chil-
dren at least temporarily protected from hand-to-hand combat by their location on
the roofs, gravity increased the impact of the missiles that they hurled.
The third factor was an attitude of mind: the reluctance common to combatants
in many cultures to kill civilians, especially women and children. Witnessing
attacks by what they had imagined were noncombatants, and seeing their own
men hit, eroded the profound reluctance to endanger civilians that initially existed
among American troops in the savage street-fighting in Mogadishu in 1993 and
Baghdad in 2003. As one soldier in Baghdad put it, there was a need to grow “accus-
tomed to the level of violence and brutality required to do his job.” As a helicopter
pilot in Iraq phrased it, “after a few hits you get less reluctant.” In Greek eyes,
enslaving the women and children of a captured town was the normal custom
of war, but killing them was the mark of a barbarian. Polybius aimed to shock
and awe the Greek world with his account of Romans killing everything in the first
47
Desire to excel: as individuals see Caes. B. Gall. 7.50; as a group see Livy 26.48.6 and Jos. BJ
5.269–270; 502–503. On Sabinus see Jos. BJ 6.56–58.
48
On citadels at Halicarnassus see Kern (1999: 204–209).
49
On house-to-house fighting at Dara see John of Ephesus Hist. eccl. 6.5 (tr. p. 382); at Carthage and
Motya see Kern (1999: 179–183, 286–298). On leaving a gate open to discourage street-fighting see
Veg. Mil. 4.25; John of Ephesus Hist. eccl. 6.5 (tr. p. 382).
26 General Topics
part of the sack of a town. In reality, the usual Roman practice seems to have been
in line with that of the Greeks. Killing what were customarily noncombatants from
their own culture was especially problematic for the Greeks and Romans.50
The fourth new thing in play against the attackers was disorientation. Under
combat stress it is easy to get very lost in a strange town. Despite the high-tec
aid of GPS and the low-tec aid of some road signs in Roman lettering, several times
American troops on the “Thunder Run” into Baghdad in 2003 took a wrong turn-
ing. Thucydides provided a classic narrative of such disorientation in his account of
the Theban troops in Plataea in 431 BC: “most of them having no idea, in the dark-
ness and the mud, on a moonless night at the end of the month, of which way to go
in order to escape.”51
Fighting inside a built-up area could drag on for a long time and call for extreme
measures. After seven days’ fighting in the streets of Dara, unable to prevail, the
Persians pulled back to the walls and resorted to a treacherous peace proposal. At
Motya, Dionysius I had his siege towers brought into the city so that his men could
assault the six-story buildings from above and below. After several days’ fighting
and heavy casualties among his men, the defenders only gave up after a surprise
attack at night. At the siege of Carthage, having fought their way up some of the
(significantly, again) six-story buildings, Scipio Aemilianus’ men laid planks as
bridges from one building to the next. Here fighting continued until Scipio ordered
that the entire area be torched. In all, this part of the siege lasted six days. Scipio had
the soldiers work in shifts “that they might not be worn out with toil, slaughter,
want of sleep, and horrid sights.”
Savagery
The storm of terrors took a huge toll in lives. Why was siege-fighting so very
bloody? There are various possible explanations. A traditional line of explanation,
drawn from behavioral sciences, points to such things as the “flight or fight” mech-
anism (or “critical reaction”) supposedly hard wired by evolution into humanity
and some other animals. To oversimplify, put too many humans or rats in too small
a space and violence is likely to escalate. Among the many objections that can be
made to this type of “naked ape” thinking is the prosaic one that Greek and Roman
warriors were actually less cramped for space when sacking a town than when
fighting in a close phalanx.52
50
On reluctance to kill “civilians” see Bowden (2000: 49); Zucchino (2004: 199); Atkinson (2004: 151.
On “ruthless Romans” see Polyb. 10.15. On attitudes to women and children see Kern (1999: 158–162,
344–351).
51
On being lost in Baghdad see Zucchino (2004: 36, 42, 113, 118, 255) and in Plataea see Thuc. 2.4.
52
“Fight or flight” explanations tend to look to Lorenz (1967: esp. 21–22, 134–140, 203–236).
An explanation more recently offered suggests that, in an army during a siege,

traditional warriors are supplanted by engineers. The mass killings thus are an
attempt by the warriors to reassert their dominance. A stumbling block for this
idea is that there would have been only a few, if any, specialist engineers in classical
armies. Most of the “engineering” of a siege was carried out by the traditional war-
riors, mainly doing traditional laboring, who would thus, in an existential turn of
events, indulge in mass slaughter to affirm their dominance over themselves.53
A third line of explanation concerns the prosaic issue of command and control.
Ancient theoretical writings on sieges, from the point of view both of attack and
defense, stress the importance of holding the “open places” in a town: the market-
place, theater, gymnasium, and so on. Only in such places could unit cohesion be
maintained. Once the troops were released into the maze of a town’s streets, the vast
majority would be unable to hear or see any commands. Polybius’ idea that on a
signal all the Roman troops in a town as one turn from mass killing to systematic,
controlled looting is a fantasy. There can be no doubting the importance of loss
of control in turning siege-fighting into a slaughterhouse. Yet it does not explain those
instances where at least a significant number of the troops could hear or see the
orders to desist from killing but carried on anyway. At the fall of Jerusalem, Titus’
order to spare any who were not in arms was largely ignored. Josephus tells how the
unresisting aged and infirm, who would fetch little as slaves, were cut down.54
In the minds of the besieging soldiers, a siege changed the risks that they ran for
the worse in two ways.55 These perceptions would have encouraged their killing
spree. The risks were thought to be more unfair. Its vulnerability to the weather, its
slow rate of fire, and its lack of maneuverability meant that ancient artillery (stone
or bolt shooting) very seldom had a place in open battle. It had a role in naval battle,
but its real home was the siege. There is much modern debate about the range of
ancient artillery. As with handheld weapons, there seems a common confusion
between maximum and effective ranges. While longer than bows, effective ranges
probably were quite short. At Jerusalem a stone thrower that had a range of 400
yards (366 meters) was regarded as exceptional. When Titus moved his camps to
within 400 yards of the walls, clearly he did not think that they would be troubled
by the defenders’ artillery, and one of his camps faced a high tower, which should
have increased the defenders’ range. At Cremna the building the excavators iden-
tified as the besiegers’ headquarters is just over 400 yards from the town walls.
Sensible modern estimates put the effective range of a bolt shooter at up to 150
meters and that of a stone thrower up to about 170 meters. Fighters could not see
artillery missiles coming at night. Although, of course, they could not see any
53
The idea of warriors reasserting dominance was proposed by Kern (1999).
54
On open spaces see Aen. Tact. 1.9; 2.7–8; 3.5; Philo Pol. 4.71. On the massacre at Jerusalem see Jos.
BJ 6.414–415.
55
As far as I am aware, the idea that the twice-altered perceptions of risk might be partly responsible
for the bloody nature of siege-fighting has not been made before; see Sidebottom (2004: 94).
28 General Topics
missiles, other than incendiary ones, coming at night. Attempts at camouflage indi-
cate that usually they could see artillery-projected stones coming in daylight. In an
attempt to stop the Jewish spotters giving a warning of incoming missiles, with the
shout “baby on the way,” the Romans at Jerusalem took to painting their missile
stones black. It has been estimated that artillery missiles were in the air for one to
two seconds. They traveled faster but usually further than other missiles, so the
time to arrival probably was much the same.56
Two things made artillery particularly frightening: its noise and its impact. At
Jotapata the noise of incoming Jewish missiles hindered Roman work even if they
missed ( Jos. BJ 3.165). At Amida, worried about hitting their own men in a melee
outside town, the Romans discouraged the Persian attackers by firing their artillery
with no missiles loaded (Amm. Marc. 19.5.6). At the same siege, Ammianus claims
that the noise of artillery firing made men jump to their deaths from a high
tower (19.6.10).
Coupled to the noise of artillery was its impact. In a pregunpowder world, the
force of an artillery missile was without man-made parallel. At Jotapata, Josephus
claims that a Roman stone decapitated a man standing next to him, throwing the
head 600 yards (550 meters) away. Yet more revolting is his claim that when a preg-
nant woman was hit the body of the unborn child landed 100 yards (90 meters)
away (BJ 3.245). At Rome a bolt passed through the corselet and body of a Goth
and pinned his body to a tree (Proc. Wars 5.23.4–12). The Persians who leaped to
their deaths at Amida at the noise of artillery had seen bolts pierce two men at a
time. At Gaza, Alexander was lucky to survive a bolt that penetrated his shield and
corselet, wounding him in the shoulder (Arr. Anab. 2.27).
As the Alexander incident shows, the range and repeated accuracy of artillery
meant that it was sometimes used to “decapitate” the enemy force: to kill the leader
or a prominent warrior and thus wreck the morale of the rest. At Cremna a siege
engineer mistreated by the Isaurian rebel Lydius went over to the Roman besie-
gers. Knowing Lydius’ habits, the deserter set up a concealed piece of artillery.
When the Isaurian looked out from his customary aperture, his erstwhile subor-
dinate shot and mortally wounded him. After the death of Lydius, the besieged
soon surrendered. At the hill fort of Hod Hill, the excavator thought finds of
11 bolts concentrated in one “chieftan’s hut” were evidence of just such a tactic
of “decapitation” leading to a surrender.57
56
On ranges of artillery see Jos. BJ 5.133, 155, 270; at Cremna see the plan of the site in Mitchell (1995)
and text at p. 198 (Proc. Wars 5.21.17–18 says the artillery range was twice that of a bow); Campbell
(2003a: 11, 21) (Campbell also has information on the time missiles spent in the air). On the visibility
of missiles see Diod. Sic. 20.96.6; Jos. BJ 3.241; 5.271–273.
57
On Cremna see Zos. 1.70. On Hod Hill see Richmond (1968: 32–33, Fig. 14). It is possible that the
“chieftan’s hut” was used as a target in training after the fall of the fort. If the excavator is correct that
the bolts found to the left of the hut, from the artillery position, represent ranging shots, as the aim of
the machine is adjusted clockwise by one to two degrees each time, it took at least five shots to get on
target.
One of the most striking ancient visual images of artillery comes from the
so-called “Cupid Gem,” which is a sculpted gem stone possibly dating to the last
century BC that was used as a seal. Like almost all art it is amenable to more than
one simultaneous reading. A first reaction is humor. The chubby little figure of
Cupid stands where one would expect a grown man. The age-old divinity updates
his bow and arrow to the latest high-tec kit (which oddly may be about to shoot
some kind of insect). But another reading might stress that the appalling power of
love’s darts was well evoked by the appalling power of artillery. No human could
stand up to either of them.
Like love, artillery was intrinsically unfair. It could strike down anyone: the well
armored, and thus elite, as easily as the “naked,” and thus lower class. It could snuff
out the brave man as easily as the coward. When the Spartan king Archidamus first
saw a catapult demonstrated, he is said to have exclaimed “man’s courage is no
more” (Plut. Mor. 191e; 219a).
Another way in which the risks the soldiers ran were changed for the worse was
that sieges were known to last longer than any other type of combat. The vast
majority of battles in the ancient world were over in a day, many in just a part
of a day. Only a tiny minority went into a second let alone a third day. In contrast,
a siege could last for weeks, months, even years. Roman armies sat outside
Carthage for three years, from 149 to 146 BC. Soldiers were not in combat through-
out that time, but they were at risk in two clearly feared ways. A large body of men
stationary outside a town was not only a problem of logistics and economics for
their commanders and their political masters—how to keep them supplied with
food, fodder, wood, and water, and how to pay for these essentials and their
transport—but it was also a very good breeding ground for disease. From whatever
perceived cause—the anger of a god, privations or poor latrine discipline among
the troops, or an unhealthy campsite—from the Iliad onward besieging armies
feared plague. It would be self-evident to the soldiers that it was the intransigence
of the besieged that was exposing them to this risk.58 The second long-term risk
came directly from the enemy. There was an ever-present danger of a sortie by
the defenders. Usually it would be unleashed at the worst times, when the besie-
gers were trying to attempt to relax, at mealtimes, or at night, especially stormy
nights.59
Prolonged exposure to fear changes people. It induces what is often called “bat-
tle fatigue” or “combat exhaustion.” Officially produced studies by the American
and British armies of the Second World War concluded that almost any soldier
would break down after respectively 240 and 400 combat days (the difference is
to be explained by the more frequent front-line rotation of the latter).
58
A very brief overview of classical logistics, with modern references, can be found in Sidebottom
(2004: 74–79); see also the essays in Erdkamp (2002) and Rodriguez (2002: 77–92).
59
Of course, if a sortie were repulsed, the besiegers might win an advantage as they tried to follow the
defenders through the gates; see Proc. Wars 5.29.45–50.
30 General Topics
Two psychiatrists who went into combat with American troops in France produced
a less optimistic timeline. After four weeks the soldiers became tired, were over-
cautious, felt hopeless, and suffered memory defects; an especially brutal incident
might trigger a final collapse. Modern combat may be a worse experience than clas-
sical. It is noisier, it seems more random, and the soldier is more isolated. Modern
soldiers may be less prepared for it than their classical forerunners. But the constant
nagging threats hanging like a sword over besieging soldiers in the classical world
must have had their effects—above all the desire for revenge on those who were
seen as responsible for these threats. Arrian says on the fall of Tyre that “the slaugh-
ter was terrible—for the Macedonians, sick as they were of the length of the siege
[seven months], went to work with savage ferocity” (Anab. 2.24).60
Yet another factor promoting bloodshed in a siege was a vicious circle of real or
rumored atrocity. Arrian said there was another reason for Macedonian killing in
Tyre. The Tyrians had dragged some prisoners “up on to the battlements, cut their
throats in full view of the Macedonian army, and flung their bodies in the sea”
(Anab. 2.24). At Carthage the commander Hasdrubal intended to strengthen the
inhabitants’ resolve to fight by making a reconciliation impossible when he had
some Roman prisoners brought out and “tore out their eyes, tongues, tendons,
and private parts with iron hooks; of some he lacerated the soles of their feet,
of others he cut off their fingers, and some he flayed alive, hurling them all, still
living, from the tops of the walls” (App. 8.118). In the eyes of the Greeks and
Romans it would be no surprise that both these examples were committed by
Phoenicians; atrocity was what was expected from barbarians. Ethnic dislike, or
racial hatred, fueled atrocity.
It may seem a trivial thing to kill people for, but insults commonly hurled from
the walls possibly goaded attackers to added violence if and when they finally got to
grips with their tormentors. Insults were thrown in open battle, but in a siege they
could be repeated ad nauseam and really begin to rankle. Coming from another
culture, the defenders at Tyre may have missed their mark when they mocked
Alexander’s men laboring on the mole that would connect the island to the shore
as being “like beasts of burden.” Usually the insults were more obscene. Literary
sources tend to be delicate on this issue. In fiction the Ethiopian king Hydaspes had
to put up with “outrageous and exasperating verbal abuse” at Syene. The man of
Palmyra who abused Aurelian, making “obscene remarks about the emperor’s own
person,” was hit by an arrow “while still uttering his insulting language, so that he
fell down from the wall before the emperor and the army.” For authentic obscen-
ity, we can turn to a small number of genuine inscribed slingshots. A man serving
Mark Antony’s wife Fulvia and besieged in Perusia took the time to cut the words
“I’m after Octavian’s arsehole!” on a missile before hurling it at the enemy. The
insults flowed both ways. A soldier on the other side inscribed on his “I’m after
60
On battle fatigue see Holmes (1985: 254–269), Ellis (1990: 234–255), and Poole (2003: 190).
Fulvia’s clit!” Revenge, for what the other side had done or said or even just for
what they were, was called for with alarming frequency.61
Surrender, starvation, and suicide
Many successful sieges did not involve a dramatic storm and bloody sack but ended
in capitulation. The safest way of entering through the defenses was to be invited in
when the enemy submitted. Yet this did not always mean that there had been little
suffering. Often the surrender might be brought about by a blockade leading to
starvation. From Plataea on, to enforce a blockade, walls of contravallation (facing
the town) and cicumvallation (facing the open countryside to hold off any relief col-
umn) might be built. This was a practice especially favored by the Romans of the
late republic and principate. Corbulo, the great general of the first century AD, said
that the pick was the best weapon to use on an enemy (Front. Strat. 4.7.2).
Once Thucydides had written his account of Plataea, a well-turned “siege piece”
was almost compulsory for a classicizing historian. Few could resist the temptation
to play with the emotions of their readers by detailing and possibly exaggerating
the suffering of the besieged. Strange foods and drink often are said to be resorted
to in extremis. According to Valerius Maximus, when besieged by the Romans, the
Cretans drank urine, their own and that of their animals. Josephus claims that at
Jerusalem the defenders “raked the sewers and old dunghills and swallowed the
refuse they found there, so that what once they could not bear to look at now
became their food.” Later in the narrative (and that in itself is suspicious) they
eat leather from belts, shoes, and sandals as well as hay and stalks. Cannibalism
always is the climax in these narrative strategies. Valerius Maximus has the men
of Calagurris in Spain killing, salting, and eating their wives and children. Josephus
effectively trumps this with a mother roasting and eating her baby: “a thing without
parallel … horrible to speak of and incredible to hear.” The stresses of the siege
allow Josephus to rival Thucydides’ famous picture of the breakdown of society
during civil war on Corcyra: at Jerusalem “wives robbed their husbands, children
their fathers and—most horrible of all—mothers their babies.”62
Although the literary games of classical authors should make us suspicious of
individual items, they should not lead us to underrate the sufferings that could
be inflicted. At Plataea, Tyre, and Rome, again and again plans were made,
although not always in time, to send away the women and children. When things
61
On insults at Tyre see Curt. 4.2.20; at Syene see Heliod. Aeth. 9.2; at Palmyra see Zos. 1.54. On
slingshots see CIL 11.6721.5, 7; the shape and size of the slingshot may have suggested the clitoris
insult; an accusation of having a big clitoris was a term of abuse: Adams (1982: 97–98). Inscribed sling-
shots, especially obscene ones, are often modern forgeries: Feugere (2002: 160).
62
On emotional effects of “siege pieces” see Quint. 8.67–71 (“we may even add fictitious incidents of
the type which commonly occur,” 8.70); Paul (1982: 144–155). On strange foods see Val. Max. 7.6 ext.
1, 3; Jos. BJ 5.424–438; 6.197–212; cf. Thuc. 3.69–85.
32 General Topics
got very bad during the siege, to husband resources, those considered useless
might be expelled from the town. When this happened at Alesia, Caesar posted
guards with orders not to let the expelled back into the city. We have no evidence
for what happened to them, stuck in no man’s land. It is only modern scholarly
kindheartedness that decides that “presumably the Gauls allowed them back into
the city.” At Cremna the old and young were expelled. The besiegers forced them
back into the town, whereupon the rebels killed them by hurling them into ravines.
Later in the siege, more of those inside were massacred in cold blood.63
On very rare occasions the conquerors would enter a deserted city and find the
defenders had chosen mass suicide. Examples are well known from Josephus’
account of the Jewish war: the zealots at Masada, and Josephus’ own avoidance
of such a fate at Jotapata. But other communities also took this ultimate step,
among them Saguntum in Spain, Abydos in Asia, and Thala in Numidia. Siege war-
fare could push any community to the wildest extremes.64
Women and abnormality
In no area of life was the separation of gender roles usually more rigid than in war.
In the Iliad (6.490–492) Hector famously tells his wife Andromache “let war be the
care of men.” A siege was the one place where the roles might begin to blur.65 As
we have seen (see “Surrender, starvation, and suicide”), the decision might be
made to send the women and children away. But if women remained there was
a variety of roles open to them in the besieged town. They might cook for the
defenders, as did those who remained in Plataea, and service the needs of the
men, as was the fate of those allowed to live in Cremna. They might donate their
hair, usually as at Aquileia to make the torsion springs of artillery, sometimes as at
Byzantium to make ropes. At Carthage they helped to make munitions. At Rhodes
and Edessa they collected missiles for reuse. They might, as at Selinus, bring things
to the fighting men. At Gela they helped to rebuild a breach in the walls. At a pinch
they might impersonate warriors on the wall. Aeneas Tacticus points out that on no
account must they be allowed to throw anything, because that would reveal their
sex. One unusual myth has the women of Argos in the early fifth century BC fight-
ing off a Spartan attack. We have seen (see “House to house”) that when there was
street-fighting the women might take to the roofs, hurling down missiles; in the
63
On sending away women and children see Thuc. 2.78 (Plataea); Diod. Sic. 17.41.1–2; Curt. 4.3.20
(Tyre); Proc. Wars 24.25.2 (Rome). On expulsion of the useless see Caes. B. Gall. 7.77–78 (Alesia). For
a kindhearted modern scholar see Kern (1999: 304). See also Zos. 1.69 (Cremna).
64
Kern (1999: 147–151).
65
For overviews on gender and war see Barry (1996) and Sidebottom (2004). In the Greek context see
Loman (2004) and Van Wees (2004: 39–40, 144).
Greek world they might also encourage their men with the ritual cry ololyge. It was
a tile thrown by a poor, old Argive woman that killed Pyrrhus of Epirus.66
A siege upset the norms of a city. The link between its urban space, in Greek its
astu, and its rural hinterland, its chora, was broken. The very landscape of its chora
could be altered. In Heliodorus’ novel Aethiopica, the huge enemy army “reduced
the open plains of Syene to a narrow, crowded passage.” Josephus says that for over
15 kilometers around Jerusalem there was a wasteland: “where once there had
been a lovely view of woods and gardens there was now nothing but desert
and the stumps of trees.” The customary times of ease and pleasure—mealtimes
and festivals—became times of especial danger. The homes of not just mortals but
also gods were threatened. Like refugees, or traitors, the gods might leave. When
Alexander besieged Tyre, a statue of Apollo was chained down by the Tyrians to
prevent the deity decamping. The Romans had a special ritual, evocatio, to entice
the gods of their enemies to come over to their side. One of the miracles of Saint
Demetrius at Thessalonica was his refusal to abandon his city even under orders
from on high.67
Given widespread abnormality, it is less wonder that a siege might be thought a
likely occasion for gender roles to reverse. At the climax of the siege of Carthage,
the commander Hasdrubal fled to the Romans carrying an olive branch. Speaking
from the roof of a burning temple, his wife called him the most effeminate of men.
She then gave him a lesson in manhood. “Having reproached him, she slew her
children, flung them into the fire, and plunged in after them. With these words,
it is said, did the wife of Hasdrubal die, as Hasdrubal himself should have died”
(App. 8.131).
Gods and mortals
In the spring of AD 238, when the local rivers were swollen with melted snow from
the Alps, the emperor Maximinus sat down to besiege the north Italian city of Aqui-
leia. Signs read in the entrails of animals, omens, and oracles buoyed up the defen-
ders. When the siege dragged on and privations began to bite, Maximinus and his
66
On women as cooks see Thuc. 2.78; on women servicing men’s needs see Zos. 1.69; on women
donating their hair see Hist. Aug. Max. et Bal. 16.5 and Cass. Dio 75.12.4; on women making munitions
see App. 8.93; on women collecting missiles see Diod. Sic. 20.97.1–2 and Proc. Wars 2.27.32–37; on
women fetching and carrying see Diod. Sic. 13.55.4–5; on women rebuilding a breach see Diod. Sic.
13.110.1; on women impersonating men see Aen. Tact. 40.4–5; on women fighting on walls see Plut.
Mor. 245c–f; on ololyge see Van Wees (2004: 144); on Pyrrhus see Plut. Pyrrh. 34.1–2.
67
Abnormalities: on landscape see Heliod. Aeth. 9.1 and Jos. BJ 6.5–8 and see also (Caes.) B. Hisp. 41;
on meals and festivals see Philo Pol. 4.2 and Veg. Mil. 4.27–28; on Apollo see Diod. Sic. 17.41.7 and
Curt. 4.3.21–22; on evocatio see Beard, North, and Price (1998: 34–35, 82–84, 132–134); on Thessalo-
nica see Miracles of Saint Demetrius, no. 8.
34 General Topics
son were murdered by his own men. The contemporary historian Herodian tells of
the involvement of a local deity:
The god, whose worship is extremely popular, is called Beles and identified with
Apollo. Some of Maximinus’ soldiers said that his image appeared frequently in
the sky fighting for the city. I am not sure whether the god really appeared to
some of the men or whether it was their imagination. They were anxious to
avoid the disgrace of being unable to resist a crowd of townsfolk that was
numerically smaller, and wanted it to appear that they had been defeated by
gods and not men. The marvellous nature of the incident makes anything
credible.68
A recent scholarly study argues that the main impact of Christianity on ancient
warfare fell on sieges. At Nisibis the Sassanid Persian king Shapur II
saw standing on the battlements one of royal appearance and all ablaze with purple
robe and crown. He supposed that this was the Roman emperor, and threatened his
attendants with death for not having announced the imperial presence; but, on their
stoutly maintaining that their report had been a true one and that Constantius was
in Antioch, he perceived the meaning of the vision and exclaimed “their god is fight-
ing for the Romans.” Then the wretched man in a rage flung a javelin into the air,
though he knew that he could not hit a bodiless being, but unable to curb his
passion.
At Constantinople the Avar khagan was said to have seen a stately woman
hurrying about on the wall. It was the city’s especial protector, the Virgin
Mary.69
It may not have been that Christians under siege were more likely to receive
divine help than pagans but that more cities in the empire were besieged after
Christianity became the state religion. Classicizing, pagan military history was
irrevocably secularized by Thucydides. Part of his rivalry with his predecessor
Herodotus was the thoroughgoing removal of the divine from his narrative. So
it is significant that the nearest that Thucydides gets to an epiphany is in a siege.
68
On the god at Aquileia, see Herodian 8.3.7–9 (see also Whittaker, 1969–1970). Marvellous and par-
adoxical stories were one of the key selling points of Herodian’s whole History: Sidebottom (1998:
2779–2780).
69
For a study of the effect of Christianity on war, see Whitby (1998: 191–208, esp. 195–207). Whitby
(p. 193) downplays the importance of both pagan and Christian religion in open battle, pointing to the
“secular” accounts of writers who knew battle at first hand such as Caesar and Ammianus. Yet, as
Whitby notes, other similar writers have more of a place for the gods, above all Xenophon (the
Jew Josephus could be added here), while the influence of Thucydides served to write the gods
out of history. On Christian epiphanies in Nisibis, see the versions in Theodoret (quoted here),
the Historia S. Ephraemi, Michael the Syrian, and the Chronicon Paschale, translated in Dodgeon
and Lieu (1991: 165–171, 203–205); on Constantinople see Whitby (1998: 207).
When the Spartan Brasidas was besieging a strongpoint called Lecythus in the town
of Torone, a part of the defenses on which casks of water and large stones had been
placed suddenly collapsed. Brasidas considered that his capture of the place had
been divinely aided. He cleared the area and consecrated it to Athena, and gave
the reward of 30 minae that he had promised to the first man over the wall to
the goddess’ temple in Lecythus.70
A siege attracted gods as blood drew ghosts. A town and its hinterland was a
topography more heavily populated by the divine than an open battlefield. Tem-
ples of the gods and shrines of heroes clustered densely around an urban space.
These houses of the divine were directly at risk in a siege. Fragments of a local
shrine were found embedded in the Persian siege ramp at Paphos. It was not just
the attackers who might tear them down. To build a second wall the people of
Rhodes used material from their theater, houses, and temples. They vowed to
the gods that they would build better ones if the city were saved. Stone-built tem-
ples were not just a handy source of building material but also natural strong
points, and usually contained treasure. There were standard excuses for interfering
with them: the enemy had already violated them, the gods actually wanted you to
use their possessions, or the gods had already left. At Jerusalem the defenders rea-
soned that they were using God’s property for God’s benefit. Titus, however, con-
sidered that the Jewish God had left the temple. We have already seen that the
latter was a widespread and terrible fear: that the people of the city would be left
abandoned by their divine protectors.71
In the modern post-Freudian world, the sheer length of a siege and the battle
fatigue that it produced would explain most epiphanies; Soviet soldiers were con-
vinced that Stalin had been seen among the besieged at Stalingrad. In the classical
post-Homeric world, divine appearances at sieges could have been explained not
only by the gods’ possessions being threatened but also by the fact that mortals
became more interesting to the gods when in battle, and no form of battle was
more testing than siege-fighting.72
70
Thuc. 4.115–116. See Hornblower (1991–1996: vol. 2, 355–356) on “epiphany” and on the way in
which Thucydides writes up Brasidas into something almost like a Homeric hero (pp. 38–61) (possibly
unsurprising given that Thucydides as an Athenian general had failed to save the city of Amphipolis
from him).
71
Temples: at Paphos see Maier and Karageorghis (1984: 186–203); at Rhodes see Diod. Sic. 20.93.1;
on “standard excuses” see Sidebottom (1993: 248, n.2); at Jerusalem see Jos. BJ 5.563–565; 6.124–128. It
would be interesting to investigate the possible range of religious connotations of the walls them-
selves in a classical siege. At times Christians blessed them, fixed crucifixes to them, and at Edessa
had a “letter from Christ” inscribed on them (Whitby, 1998: 197–198). The walls at pagan Thasos
had reliefs of the gods (Ober, 1991: 180). The question remains open as to whether either the delib-
erate patterning of walls (Hellenkemper, 1983: 22, Figs 8 and 9; Johnson, 1983: 38) or the reuse of bits
of temples and sculptures (Blagg, 1983: 130–135) evoked any religious or other thoughts.
72
On Stalin see Beevor (1998: 197).
36 General Topics
Literature and life

As Carthage burned, its conqueror, Scipio Aemilianus, wept and quoted Homer
(App. 8.132). “There will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish, and Priam,
and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear.” The lines come from Hector’s
prophetic speech to his wife Andromache in the Iliad (6.448–449). The worst thing
will be her being taken captive; Hector’s sole consolation is that he will have died
fighting. It is possible this scene was put into Scipio’s mind by the last act of the
siege, when the Carthaginian commander Hasdrubal had given himself up to cap-
tivity while his wife chose death. Asked why he was crying, Scipio said it was for
Rome, which one day would fall. Presumably, like Hector, Scipio did not imagine
that he would be alive to see it.
As the army of Septimius Severus sat in the blazing sun before the desert city of
Hatra, a soldier called Valerius accused Julius Crispus, a tribune of the praetorian
guard, of quoting Virgil (Cass. Dio 76.10.1–2): “So that Turnus may marry Lavinia,
we are being destroyed as if nothing.” Presumably the emperor, or at least some of
his advisers, knew enough of the Aeneid to realize that the surrounding lines from
Drances’ speech accused Turnus of personal cowardice. Here a little learning was a
very dangerous thing. Crispus probably had not thought through his “casual” quo-
tation. Drances was “always a force for discord,” whose “hand did not warm to
battle” (11.371–373). Crispus was executed and Valerius promoted in his place.
Both these strange stories probably actually happened. The Scipio one we know
from Appian, who got it from Polybius, who was with Scipio at Carthage. Although
not at Hatra, Cassius Dio was a member of Septimius Severus’ consilium (his
council), and in such circles the admonitory power of Crispus’ tale would be
considerable.
Siege-fighting summoned thoughts of literature, and the grandeur of epic poetry
often seemed especially suitable. These literary memories could serve as tools for
reflection on the future and the mutability of human fortune, or to encode, none
too well in the case here, criticism of contemporary circumstances. Preexisting lit-
erature could also shape how sieges were remembered.
Some five years after the event, the imperial prince Julian had the unwelcome
task of praising the defense of the city of Nisibis in AD 350 by troops loyal to his
hated cousin Constantius II. Julian pulled out all the stops. This was a defense like
no other. Carthage, Plataea, Messene, Pylos, Syracuse, or Rome in 390 BC—none
could compare. The perennial boastful nature of the eastern barbarian linked the
Achaemenid Persian Xerxes back in 480 BC to the contemporary attacker, the Sas-
sanid Persian Shapur II. As the former had notoriously defied nature by bridging
the Hellespont to march on the sea and by digging a canal through the peninsular of
Mount Athos to sail on dry land, so the latter used the waters of the river
Mygdonius to turn land into sea, creating an artificial lake around Nisibis and then
assaulting its walls from boats. Julian showed that he knew that in reality Shapur
had used the well-known strategy of directing the waters of a river to undermine
the walls of the city. But Nisibis was to be “a battle the like of which no man had
ever known before.”
Almost certainly Julian took the idea of a besieging army using a river to create
a lake and then approaching the town walls on boats from Heliodorus’ novel
Aethiopica, where the Ethiopian army employs the Nile thus in front of the city
of Syene. Julian changed the story slightly, his boats carry siege weapons rather
than envoys, but he nodded toward his inspiration when he said that “the Myg-
donius flowed in and flooded the ground about the walls, as they say the Nile
floods Egypt.” Although Constantius himself was not at Nisibis, he would have
received official reports of the action, and it is most probable that some of his
court, the original audience for Julian’s speech, were at the siege. It says a lot
about the level of acceptable fiction in a court panegyric and also about the mal-
leability of memories of combat that some years later, while campaigning in Gaul,
Julian wrote another oration for Constantius in which the boating lake at Nisibis
reappeared.73
Art, here literature, did not merely reflect the reality of a siege, nor did it just
shape understanding and memory of the fighting. It directly influenced people’s
actions. When attacking the town of Pirisabora, the emperor Julian ordered some
of his men to attack a gate in testudo formation. Most unusually, Julian went
with them.
And although he and those who shared in his peril were assailed with rocks, bullets
from slings, and other missiles, nevertheless he often cheered on his men as they
tried to break in the leaves of the folding gate. [Finally] he got back with all his men;
a few were slightly wounded, he himself was unhurt, but bore a blush of shame
upon his face. For he had read that Scipio Aemilianus, accompanied by the historian
Polybius … and thirty soldiers, had undermined a gate of Carthage in a similar
attack.
Ammianus, for whom Julian was a hero, went on to explain that Scipio’s attack was
safer as he was shielded by an arch of masonry above the gate.74
It was not just the exceptionally bookish Julian whose actions at a siege were
shaped by the literature he had read. Besieging Avaricum in 52 BC, Julius Caesar’s
men built two mobile towers linked by a line of mantlets, which edged toward the
town on a siege ramp. Polybius, writing in the 140s BC, had detailed the efforts of
Philip V of Macedon at the siege of Echinus in 210 BC involving two towers linked
by a long gallery. A modern scholar has commented: “it is extraordinary how
73
On Nisibis, see Julian Or. 1.27b–30a; 2.62b–67b; cf. Heliod. Aeth. 9.1–13. Dodgeon and Lieu (1991:
164–171, 191–207) assemble the relevant sources in translation. That Julian follows Heliodorus
(Lightfoot, 1988: 114–121), rather than the other way around (Bowersock, 1994: 48–49, 149–160),
is controversial.
74
On Julian and Polybius see Amm. Marc. 24.2.14–17; Lendon (2005: 292–295).
38 General Topics
closely Caesar’s works at Avaricum resembled the above arrangements. Caesar, or

his military architects, must have studied Hellenistic sieges carefully and chosen the
most appropriate model for his purpose.”75
The reality of siege-fighting and its literature did not move on different planes.
They were inextricably linked, and influences went both ways.
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2 ANCIENT SIEGE

0 Kilometers 800 Syene

MAP 2.1 Sieges in the classical world.

and is represented by Aeneas Tacticus, Philo of Byzantium,2 Onasander

local manufacture where needed, artillery was intended to be provided by specialist

replaced with the easier-to-construct-and-use—and thus easier for barbarians to

Under the walls

Over the walls

FIGURE 2.4 Column of Marcus Aurelius.

Through the walls

Alternatively they might try to destroy or damage it by dropping either heavy or

Very occasionally classical armies used elephants to assault a breach. It does

Surprise, tricks, and treachery

An explanation more recently offered suggests that, in an army during a siege,

Surrender, starvation, and suicide

Women and abnormality

Gods and mortals

Literature and life

closely Caesar’s works at Avaricum resembled the above arrangements. Caesar, or

Adams, J. N. (1982), The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. London.

Du Mesnil du Buisson, R. (1936), “The Persian mines,” in M. I. Rostovtzeff, A. R. Bellinger,

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