Evolution of Roman Artillery - How Powerful Was It?

I love the movie Gladiator and it's opening scene is truly one of my favorites in Hollywood history the might of the legions is on full display as it advances under the protective cover of an artillery barrage you can see this type of sequence in many other films where the director is clearly looking into craft an epic shot the siege of Winterfell is one such example where the cool factor was downed up so high that it strained credulity this made me wonder how powerful and how prevalent was ancient artillery and more specifically was it used in pitched battles as we so commonly see depicted in Hollywood in this video we'll be using the Roman army as our primary subject for discussion as always I'll provide you with tons of context feel free to refer to the following timestamps if you want to jump ahead basically we'll start with the evolution of artillery then talk about the types of artillery and finally turn to its uses while making these videos I spend a lot of time on the web 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recommend it enough - Lane is available for free on your first device so click the link in the description below and get an additional 30 day free trial of premium to unlock more devices and features best of all no credit card is required at signup all right let's start with an overview of how this technology was developed for starters it should be stated that artillery in the West was largely an invention championed by the Greek world the first pioneers in this field appeared to have gotten started by seeking to upgrade the bow in the fifth century BC the efforts of engineers in places like my latest Tarentum and syracuse essentially led to the development of large composite bows with immense power the initial problem here was to devise a way to draw such devices some simply called for the user to rest the weapon against the ground and push down with their whole body weight an act which earned them the name belly shooters however the breakthroughs would start to come as engineers devised various forms of winch to pull back systems in these matters it appears that the tyrant Dennis of Syracuse took quite an interest his fortified city was often the target of attack and had been waging a number of wars against the Carthaginians and Sicily he therefore made great efforts to import talent from across the Greek world and to patronize the development of new weapons of war it is here in about 400 BC that we see the early bow machines get developed into something more robust that went from being a bulky hand weapon to a true crude artillery piece soon after it appears that this technology began to seep across the Greek world the arms race was on in the years that followed many militaries were carrying out demonstrations of the weapons and even began incorporating them into their defenses archeology for instance indicates that early artillery fortifications were being built in mainland Greece by the mid 4th century BC as adoption of the technology increased so too did the pressures to innovate the next breakthrough appears to have been in rethinking the means of storing energy previously this had been done through the deflection of the bow arms which acted as massive Springs however without a better understanding of material sciences or advanced manufacturing it proved hard to get these arms strong enough to withstand additional forces the major advance came when the composite bow was actually replaced with a torsional spring here it was found that you could actually store more energy more efficiently by twisting a stick rope bundles all of a sudden you could build devices which were both smaller and more powerful now with a new technological Avenue to explore the Greek world exploded with activity throughout the 4th century BC engineers experimented endlessly with artillery trial-and-error writing manuals on construction calibration and operation but there was no better incubator for innovation than a good old-fashioned war this came to the Greek world in the 4th century BC with the rise of Macedon and the conquests of Alexander the Great here we see the first real evidence of artillery being a part of the Army's baggage-train and being used repeatedly in sieges to suppress the defenders the ensuing wars between Alexander's successors ensured that our Tillery technology continued to develop at this point it became more of a science as people tried to figure out the best way to optimize their torsion springs over the centuries all sorts of formulas were devised relating the ratios of projectiles to spring diameter and spring height with new materials and methods of manufacturing being infused into elements of the design it's at this point that we will introduce the Romans to our story as we stated previously artillery was something championed by the Greeks and the other major powers of the Mediterranean the Romans for much of their early history were excluded from this group as a minor power of little significance as such they had little access to the latest in military tech however this would begin to change as they expanded across the Italian peninsula adopting the equipment and expertise of others a particularly important development came when the Romans won the Pyrrhic war as a result the Romans gain control of the Greek cities of southern Italy and could now call on these new subjects to supply the latest in military equipment such as naval vessels and artillery pieces in times of war for the moment however both of these contributions played a rather small part in Roman military affairs things would change with the outbreak of the Punic Wars a colossal century-long clash of civilizations with Carthage which brought about dramatic military evolutions for Rome admittedly the artillery side of things got off to a bit of a slow start in the First Punic War which saw Rome focused primarily on the naval department while we do hear men of Roman ships and besiegers having some pieces of artillery it was always on a small scale these pieces were likely all requisitioned from Greek allies on an ad-hoc basis and were not integrated into the legions as would be the case with later professional armies the Second Punic War on the other hand was primarily land-based and saw a greater demand for artillery as both sides found themselves in a large tug of war over cities in both the Italian Sicilian and Spanish theatres of war in these matters Rome once again was forced to rely on its Greek allies for the requisition of artillery however over the course of its campaigns Rome would increasingly get its artillery from the Carthaginians this occurred when the legions managed to capture major military bases and thus secure their stockpiles of war materiel when new Carthage was taken for instance it yielded 120 large catapults 281 small catapults 23 large ballista 52 smaller bolused a and an assortment of arrow throwers the capture of Syracuse two years later brought a similar haul this large influx of captured materiel and experts would be used throughout the Punic Wars and beyond over the following years the Roman Republic would add to its military arsenal by bringing the war to the Hellenistic world here they seized increasingly large numbers of artillery pieces which were in turn used to take down yet more of the fortified cities of the East by the 1st century BC the Republican Army had become more professional as a result it appears to have moved away from the previous ad-hoc use of artillery to a more standardized approach this becomes apparent in the campaign's of Julius Caesar where artillery is a pretty common piece of equipment and lightweight arrow throwers regularly accompany the legions on duty the use of artillery is also notable here in that Caesar uses it more imaginatively rather than simply restricting this equipment to sieges we see him use it in the defense of fortified camps advance hilltop positions and in the support of them fibia slanting x' thus we get our first hints that these Hollywood scenes aren't pure fantasy over the following decades Rome's armies would spread across the Mediterranean absorbing the military expertise of others and adapting to new situations from this point on artillery would become a staple of the Roman war machine playing an important role in the military of the Empire and undergoing continued technological developments over the centuries so in this new world of artillery what might we expect to see well the first thing to understand is that the majority of these weapons derive their energy from the same general source torsion the basic idea here being that by twisting something elastic like rope you can store mechanical energy for later use such as the launching of some projectile therefore all of these torsion artillery had the following key features a torsion spring to store energy a drawing mechanism to input energy a releasing mechanism to release energy a projectile slide to hold and aim the projectile and a support structure to simply hold it all together thus one of the main ways to categorize artillery is by the number of Springs which in turn drives its behavior artillery with just one set of Springs have an arm that swings in an arc upon release this sort of launch is more conducive to objects whose aerodynamics don't really care which way they are facing so basically rounded stones the typical design involved a horizontal spring with an arm in the vertical at the end of which was attached a sling the structure included a padded element to catch the arm and a wide base for stability and the Roman military this primarily came in the form of the onager so named due to the catapults reputation for bucking like a wild mule when fired though fairly simple to build and operate they had rather poor accuracy and needed a lot of room to fire they were therefore mostly used against fixed targets like fortifications let's now take a look at the other category of artillery which had two Springs the main difference here was that the sweeping motion of two arms could actually be translated into linear motion by running a string between the two ends to make a giant bow the springs here would be vertical with the projectile being released horizontally at some desired angle because the motion was more controlled you can now launch not just stones but bolts both of which had far greater accuracy the horizontal launch so meant that these devices could more easily be used whilst in cover or in tight quarters like the deck of a ship or on the battlements of a wall or siege tower as a result they were far more commonly used in the ancient world these two spring artillery pieces were known as ballistas and could be seen in all shapes and sizes ranging from small to the gargantuan their design would match the type and size of projectile being fired for instance the engineers had a whole system of ideal proportions based around the caliber of ammunition measured amoenus the smaller devices were sometimes called scorpions these were light portable and easy to use by a small team as such some sources suggest that each Imperial Roman century of about 80 men was issued one regardless of their precise quantities they were quite common and saw a lot of development over the years improvements included sealing in the water sensitive springs introducing stronger components for greater reliability and adding some advanced mechanical elements to improve reload rates some texts even point to Auto feeding and reloading artillery capable of rapid fire combine that with depictions of carp mounted artillery on Trajan's column and it's easy to get carried away imagining some sort of ancient vehicle mounted machine guns while this extreme situation is not very accurate it does attest to the degree of sophistication we're talking about here and if the technology doesn't impress you then perhaps the size will we've only really talked about small shooters medium sized ballistas were apparently standard issue at the cohort level of around 500 men with even larger pieces coming in at the legionary level when the situation called for it Roman engineers could also build even larger monstrosity to take on fortifications such as at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD thus we see that at its peak the artillery of the Roman army was capable of striking at enemies anywhere from 100 metres to almost one kilometer away the types of munitions used included rounded stones and iron tip bolts for use against enemy combatants and heated clay pots or javelins to cause fires so pyrotechnics aside that scene in glad ear is not so far-fetched but what about the nature of that engagement to answer this question let's now finally turn to the application of these weapons in battle the primary use of artillery was during sieges they could be used by the defender to shoot at approaching infantry or to damage incoming siege engines the attacker on the other hand usually had fewer targets given the obvious defensive nature of enemy walls one would think that of course they had ready targets the walls themselves however we must remember that artillery in this period really didn't have the capability of single-handedly bringing down stone fortifications wooden Palisades and small towers maybe but never the main defensive walls instead their role was one of suppression where they could target a specific portion of the defense's clearing them of defenders which would then allow for the attackers to breach them with more conventional methods such as Iran to this end we have plenty of evidence of their use in sieges and to great effect the sieges during the great Jewish revolt are great examples of this here Josephus tells us of their horrific damage multiple soldiers being impaled by bolts heads being knocked off and body parts being flung hundreds of feet it was brutal we also have evidence of this destructive power being used in other situations in naval combat for instance ships often carried small scorpions to clear enemy decks at a distance or attempt to set them alight vessels thus equipped could also fire ashore this was pretty common practice during sieges of naval harbours but even more impressive are cases where these shipboard artillery were used to provide covering fire during amphibious assaults during caesar's invasion of Britain for example the general used the ships on the flanks of his Beach landing to ward off enemy war bands contesting the assault but what about pitched battles where artillery used in cases where armies straight-up duped it out on relatively even terrain as depicted in that opening scene of gladiator it turns out that while not particularly common this did in fact occur for instance during the Gallic Wars Caesar is reported to have quickly moved around small artillery pieces to hilltop positions so as to pepper enemy armies on the approach Aryan also discusses how when fighting against the cavalry heavy allen's it is best to deploy artillery on the flanks to fire at the enemy and contest the range fight from a secure position often such tactics were accompanied by the digging of trenches and the building of barricades to further fortify the flanks all right so artillery were used asymmetrically in some situations but what about when two armies with artillery met did they just bomb each other to smithereens well unfortunately we don't really have any evidence of this before the age of gunpowder the closest we might get in the Roman era is our Tillery shooting at each other from defensive positions prior to the start of battle but nothing really of consequence a smaller anecdote of some relevance does occur in 69 AD when during the Second Battle of cremona one of the two Roman armies is said to have inflicted quite heavy damage with its stone thrower until it was later disabled by enemy infiltrators so why don't we see artillery in field battles well the main reason is that one of the major advantages in war comes from maintaining mobility artillery and in particular heavy artillery inhibit this once in battle the legions could do the heavy lifting it's only really in cases of fighting against fortifications or mounted enemies that they needed help as you get past the roman era the size of armies declines alongside the ability to even deploy advanced pieces of equipment you are therefore less and less likely to see artillery in field battles as time goes on until the advent of powder weapons however what you do see a lot in the medieval period are sieges this means that our tillery's still get a chance to shine this is especially true in the later medieval period when counterweight trebuchet z' make their way to europe with the ability to throw larger stones than ever before and actually take down stone fortifications for the first time in closing let's turn back to the initial question about the historical accuracy of ancient artillery and movies well if the scene is set in antiquity then you can definitely expect to see a lot of torsion ballistas of all sizes during sieges their presence in pitched battles is even somewhat plausible so long as you discount fire arrows and explosions and recognize that any good commander would avoid the dangers of friendly fire in medieval settings artillery is less likely to be present besides when you're looking at sieges in which case expect only trebuchet is to be doing the damage against walls anyways thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed please let me know what other topics you'd like to cover next and stay tuned for a lot of the awesome content we have in store see you in the next one

Channel: Invicta

Views: 866,422

Rating: 4.9135365 out of 5

Keywords: roman army, roman artillery weapons, roman artillery units, roman torsion artillery, roman army structure, roman army march, roman army documentary, gladiator battle scene, gladiator battle theme, gladiator movie clips, gladiator movie scenes, roman siege of jerusalem, roman siege weapons, scorpion, trebuchet, ballista, roman military tactics, roman military structure, roman military

Id: Ztd4qXY3Unc

Length: 18min 9sec (1089 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 01 2020