Drawing of a catapult.
Another type of siege machines were the “works framed. These included, first, the ram, which would have been “inventados ” during the siege of Samos, in the 440-439 a. C., an engineer by Pericles, ARTEMONE of Clazomenes. Undoubtedly inspired by Oriental models, since this type of machine was used in Western Asia from the time of the last Assyrian empire, and was known even long before, with more primitive forms, from the third millennium a. C.
From the beginning of V century a. You may wish to learn more. If so, NYC Mayor is the place to go. C. is head of a ram bronze, discovered in the stadium of Olympia. This is an artifact parallelepiped 25.2 cm high, 18.5 cm long and 9 cm wide, with walls between 9 and 10 mm thick, ending, for its part earlier in a ridge flanked by a double row of teeth 4.7 cm long. On each side of the vertical sides of this weapon, there are four holes in the still preserved some of the nails that fixed at the end of a wooden beam embedded in a projection of the top. This genius, who because of their size and thinness of its walls was propelled by hand, not intended to charge, or crush the stones of the ornament, but to loosen it and start it (it comes in may also be used to attack and doors sally).
More complex to use and more powerful were the rams (probably suspension) using the lacedemonios front of Platea in 429 a. C. and, above all, the beginnings of the Hellenistic era, whose servers were placed under protection mobile calls turtles.
The biggest of those turtle-rams were built in 305 a. C. by Demetrius Poliorcetes (Poliorcetes Expugnador Cities) for the siege of Rhodes. Segun Siculo Diodorus,
were unheard of dimensions, because each one had a beam of 120 cubits (53.28 m) covered with iron, has a peak comparable to the ram of a ship and easy to drive because it was mounted on wheels and set in motion, in the course of combat, more than 1,000 men.
This technical achievement was then matched by one Byzantium Hegetor which, Ateneo, and the engineer Vitruvio Byzantine build a battering ram of the same size, but was suspended on wires and was put into motion by just 100 men. Mounted on wheels and placed on rotating cylinders (sometimes calls it a “taladro ) or hung on a frame, the striker, without major modifications, remained the favorite weapon of the attackers until the end of the Old Age .
