(Read about these and other battles that shaped the course of history inside Military Heritage magazine.) The place was Sicily, strategic crossroads of the Mediterranean world, where the thriving Greek city of Syracuse was locked in a century-long struggle with Carthage, an aggressive North African trading empire founded by Phoenicians around 700 bc. The Ancient Military-Industrial Complex Spurred InnovationĪround 400 bc we find the first historical evidence for the use of catapults in war. That something was the catapult: a machine for projecting heavy missiles. Something new was required to break the stalemate between armies and fortifications. This might take years, leaving both sides impoverished. If you couldn’t take a city by trickery (build a Trojan Horse!) or treachery (bribe a gate guard!), the only alternative was to starve it out. Shooting down a man or horse was one thing the more difficult problem was, how to attack or defend a fortified city without a storm of missiles to keep attackers away from the gates, or to sweep defenders from the walls. When Leonidas, the Spartan commander at Thermopylae (480 bc), was told that the Persian army fired arrow volleys so dense they blocked the sunlight, he is said to have sneered and replied, “Very good, then we shall fight in the shade.” Greeks gradually lost the habit of archery, a skill that requires lifelong practice in hunting or competitive target shooting to maintain. By the time of the Persian Wars (fifth century bc), Greek armies were so confident in their bronze armor and thrusting spears that they grew contemptuous of missiles, that is, arrows. In the Odyssey, the eighth century bc epic poem, Odysseus, returning home from the Trojan War, seizes a mighty bow hung on the wall of his hall a bow so large and powerful that only he had the strength to bend and string it. Bronze Armor Shielded the Warriors of Ancient Greece From ArrowsĮvery ancient civilization knew the Stone Age technology of bow and arrow. Within a few generations, however, catapults evolved into siege engines that could knock down city walls made of stone. The earliest catapults were precision antipersonnel weapons-the sniper rifles of antiquity. But the Greek word katzapeltes originally meant “shield-piercer” ( kata = “through,” + pelta = “light infantry shield”), and this was how these machines were first used in Ancient Greece. When we think “catapult,” we imagine the types of weapons used for hurling rocks, dead plague victims, or unlucky cows against a castle.
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