What kind of siege weapons were used during Punic wars?
Upvote:4
As for siege equipment used during the Punic Wars it's quite a long period and should be looked at in a progressive manner.
- When the Roman republic entered the war in 264 BC there was little siege strategy within the Roman army. Their main tactic was the circumvention of an enemy town with a series of palisades and connected fortifications. They would then wait it out, some sieges lasted several months and may or may not have been successful.
- Gradually the Roman army was exposed to Greek culture and technology through their ally Syracuse. They then adopted new machines to their siege train such as the covered ram etc and heavy ballista.
- The Carthaginian army had altogether more advanced Hellenised siege technology at their disposal. Through years of fighting with the Sicilian Greeks they had developed and taken ideas from over two centuries of warfare.
If you need more information try reading JF Lazenby's book on the First Punic War, and Osprey publication Ancient Siege Warfare. (Both sources informed this answer).
Upvote:10
There's actually quite a bit available, even just from wikipedia:
Catapults: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carthage_%28c._149_BC%29
Trireme Rams, Corvus (naval): http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_corvus.html
Sambuca, Claw of Archimedes, Heat Ray, onagers (naval): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Syracuse_%28214%E2%80%93212_BC%29#Siege
Battering rams, ramps, roman tortoise, and towers were also very commonly used siege weapons in this time period. If you're writing a paper or article you might research those more thoroughly; I don't know offhand to what degree these were used in the various battles of the three Punic wars.
You should definitely read up on Archimedes, he's credited as being one of the most famous engineers in history, and was active in crafting defenses for his city during the Roman invasion.
You should also review the use of elephants in this war; while not traditionally "siege engines", they were sometimes used to help break through defenses and were a staple unit for Carthage.
More post
- 📝 Is it true that novel 1984 became famous under US propaganda?
- 📝 What legal code first provided tenants rights and/or covered eviction?
- 📝 Were African-American slaves forced to reproduce under the assumption of artificial selection?
- 📝 Did archers synchronize fire? Why?
- 📝 Was smoking allowed aboard hydrogen-filled zeppelins?
- 📝 Why was Africa never really colonized?
- 📝 What were the types of currency used in ancient Mesopotamia?
- 📝 Was throwing hammers as weapons common during European medieval combat?
- 📝 Were there ever instances of sailors pressed into British service in Europe ending up in the Caribbean?
- 📝 Border between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires
- 📝 Queen Victoria and the Tsar’s faberge egg
- 📝 How did lecturers magnify their voice in the days before amplification?
- 📝 GDP for World Powers during the Napoleonic Era?
- 📝 How has it happen, that Soviet Union, after the win in WW2 did not took German technologies?
- 📝 Why didn't SW Virginia join West Virginia?
- 📝 When did "JFK" become a recognizable initialism for John F. Kennedy?
- 📝 How widespread was the use of red ochre by sapiens in prehistory?
- 📝 Does Taleb's claim of epidemics with a death count of >1,000 being in the lower hundreds (in the last 2,500 years) seem accurate?
- 📝 How were the ladies of the Mughal harem titled and styled?
- 📝 Can someone help explain this floor plan of a mid 20th century apartment?
- 📝 What were the dimensions of the Lahitolle 95 mm cannon?
- 📝 Why didn't Britain's nuclear weapons deter Argentina from invading the Falklands?
- 📝 Why was Switzerland not attacked during the two World Wars?
- 📝 Why are the police never responsible for guarding the Head of the State?
- 📝 What is the earliest depiction of a crane?
- 📝 Did Luxemburg have a constitution in 1890?
- 📝 What was the economic impact of WW1 on USA's economy?
- 📝 When did soldiers begin wearing ballooned pants?
- 📝 Why weren't the U.S. aircraft carriers in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?
- 📝 What military uniform is this?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What kind of siege weapons were used during Punic wars?
- 📝 What weapons were manufactured in India by the British forces which were used during world wars?
- 📝 What drugs were used in England during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 What kind of ink was used by medieval scribes in Iceland, given that there were no plant galls for iron-gall ink?
- 📝 During the Sengoku-jidai, what were shinobi (aka ninja) used for?
- 📝 What deaths were caused by weapons deployed during a war long after the war has ended?
- 📝 What methods were used for onboard ship communication during WW2?
- 📝 What kind of canoes were used in 19th century Yucatán?
- 📝 What kind of slang terms were used in Massachusetts in 1947?
- 📝 What field guns, howitzers and mortars were used by the Indian Army and the Pakistan Army during the 1971 war?
- 📝 What cars were used with the Crocodile Class Ce 6/8 locomotive during its active years, especially at the beginning?
- 📝 Why were Navajo code talkers used during WW2?
- 📝 What were sandbags used for in medieval duels?
- 📝 What kind of labor was used to build the Egyptian pyramids?
- 📝 What wars were started when an indebted country refused to pay?
- 📝 What kind of evidence (if any) could be used to identify a large conquest in the time before writing?
- 📝 What were the individual soldiers motivated by during World War 1?
- 📝 What were the operating principles of Japan's MITI during the 1950s and 60s?
- 📝 What were French actions against Germany during September 1939?
- 📝 At the time of Sputnik, what kind of radios were common in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What proportion of the population of Soviet Union were taken into custody by the state during Stalin's time?
- 📝 What exactly were currours, and what were they used for?
- 📝 What were Chiang Kai-shek's biggest strategic blunders during the Second Sino-Japanese war?
- 📝 Could besieged medieval cities develop a micro-economy during wars to endure the siege for long time?
- 📝 Were B-17s (rather than B-29s) ever used to bomb mainland Japanese territory during WW2 (at least before the capture of Okinawa)?
- 📝 What specific changes were made to political ideologies around during and before World War I?
- 📝 What were factors that led to a decline in bond yields during World War II given that the opposite should have happened?
- 📝 What trains were used on the Dakar-Niger Railway in the late 1950s and early 1960s?
- 📝 What demographic of people were the Ford Motor's Company biggest customers during the car boom of the early twentieth Century?
- 📝 What were women doing at the Battle of Dorylaeum during the First Crusade?