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specialization and reliance on acknowledged experts. The presence of sev-eral Rhodian commanders among the fleets which were active in the easternMediterranean in the early second century is one indication that there wasa pool of elite naval specialists. For example, Pausistratus and Polyxenidas,who were on opposing sides at Panhormus in 190, were both Rhodians andseem to have known each other quite well (Livy 37.10–11).

Accounts of naval warfare demonstrate the importance of identifyingthe ‘flagship’, which normally carried the commander of a fleet. If this wascaptured, then the fleet would make the assumption that their leader hadbeen lost, which often badly affected their morale. Cornelius Nepos saysthat in a battle between the forces of Prusias of Bithynia and Eumenes II ofPergamum in 184, Hannibal, commander of the Bithynian fleet, used a fakemessage to Eumenes, which the latter assumed would be an offer of peace,in order to find out which vessel the king was sailing on, so that his shipscould direct their attacks against it and force the king to withdraw from thebattle, to the detriment of his fleet’s morale (Nep. Hann. 10.5–11.4). Signalsare often mentioned in accounts of naval battles. They allowed admirals tocommunicate with all or part of their fleet. Presumably they were by meansof flags or pennants and it would have been necessary for someone on eachship to keep an eye on the flagship for them.

i i . s ieges

In a speech delivered to the Athenian assembly in the summer of 341, theAthenian orator and statesman Demosthenes drew a contrast between theold style of warfare that was typical of the Greek city-states in the earlyclassical period and what he saw as the realities of the present day:

So archaic were their practices, or rather so citizen-based (politikos), that no-oneever even bribed anyone, but the conduct of war was all open and above board.Yet nowadays, without doubt, you see that most total defeats are due to treachery,and none of them happen as the result of pitched battles.

Demosthenes went on to complain that it was no longer phalanxes of heavyinfantry that were the dominant factor in Greek warfare, but the mixedforces of Philip II of Macedon:

Whenever, with these forces, he attacks those who are at odds with each other, andwho, through distrust, do not put any forces in the field, he sets up his enginesand besieges them.

(Dem. 9.48–50)

This was the third of Demosthenes’ celebrated Philippics, a series of politicalspeeches directed against Philip and his supporters. Although treachery isemphasized by Demosthenes as a way of taking cities, the history of the

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448 the hellenistic world and roman republic

next 200 years shows that the 340s were the beginning of an era in whichsiege warfare was transformed. By the end of the second century siegeshad become commonplace and were probably more typical of the combatexperience of Greek and Roman soldiers than pitched battles.168

1. Commanding siege operations

The role of the commander in a siege, whether on the defensive or theoffensive side, was significantly different from that of the commander onthe battlefield. In the context of a siege, the ancient commander couldexercise a greater degree of coordination and direction of the efforts of hisforces. Indeed, it might be argued that siege warfare offered the greatestand most comprehensive challenges to the military skills of Hellenisticand Roman commanders, because they involved large forces and the manydifferent types of equipment needed careful coordination.

The combat conditions of ancient sieges seem to have provided some-thing of a dilemma for commanders in this period. While personal presenceand involvement in the action could have a significant morale-boostingeffect at key moments, it also exposed them to the possibility of beingstruck by missiles, whether intentional or lucky shots. Perhaps it is no coin-cidence that Philip II and Alexander were both wounded during sieges.Philip famously lost an eye in the siege of Methone in 354 (Diod. Sic.16.34.5; Just. Epit. 7.6.14). The arrow that gave him this distinctive disfig-urement might very easily have ended his life. During the siege of Tyre in332 Alexander personally led an expedition into the Anti-Lebanon regionto enforce his authority in an area which supplied much-needed timberfor his siege towers and other devices. He also led a naval counterattackagainst the Tyrian forces after they had raided the Cypriot fleet as it lay atanchor to the north of the city, but Alexander’s bravery and inspirationalleadership verged on recklessness, and at Gaza in 332 he was wounded bya catapult bolt shot from the walls (Arr. Anab. 2.27.2). Alexander can beseen as a good example of a successful field commander who found it diffi-cult to adapt to the role of siege coordinator. He seems to have lacked thepatience and methodical temperament appropriate to long-duration siegewarfare. This is not to say that Alexander was unsuccessful, for he capturedmany cities and strongholds in his brief but action-filled reign as king ofMacedon. Nevertheless his impulsive nature resulted in rash and sometimesvery costly decisions, not just for Alexander himself, but for the men underhis command.169 His insistence on assaulting those Indians who had taken

168 For a survey of sieges in this period see Kern (1999) chs. 8–11.169 See the evaluation of Kern (1999) 201.


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refuge on the so-called rock of Heracles in 327 is but one example (Arr.Anab. 4.28–30).

In contrast to Alexander, Roman generals like Marcus Claudius Mar-cellus, who took two years over the siege of Syracuse (214–12), can seemmodels of patience and restraint. Marcellus proceeded in stages, gradu-ally capturing some of the outlying fortifications and gradually penningthe defenders up in the old city. He made several attempts to gain entry bynegotiation and treachery, and eventually his troops were admitted througha side gate guarded by Spanish mercenaries whose commander had beentempted to change sides (Livy 25.30). Even the young Publius CorneliusScipio Africanus comes across as cautious in comparison with Alexander.When he ventured near to the front lines at New Carthage in 209 he wasaccompanied by three personal shield-bearers (Livy 26.44.6). Although heneeded to capture that city quickly he did not throw everything into asingle assault, but probed the defences at several places and used both shipsand an ingenious crossing of the lagoon as the tide was receding to find theweakest points in the defences (Livy 26.44–6). We are also told that, whenthere was a dispute over whether a marine or a legionary soldier shouldbe rewarded with the prestigious honour of a crown for being the veryfirst over the city wall, Scipio diplomatically awarded it to both of them,avoiding a feud between his fleet and army (Livy 26.48).

2. Personnel

The conflicting needs of the charismatic battle commander and themethodical siege coordinator may have been partly responsible for theemergence of specialists in siege warfare. We see the appearance of spe-cialized military engineers in the second half of the fourth century. It canreasonably be argued that there was a general trend towards specializationin many walks of life across the Greek world in the fourth century. Thistrend was particularly marked in warfare and it seems to be a result of theincreasing technical complexity of combat. As the requirements of militarystrategy expanded to include the capture or defence of cities, men like theThessalians Polyidus, catapult-maker for Philip II, and Diades and Charias,siege engineers of Alexander the Great, rose to prominence. Archimedesis best known today as a scientist, but he spent his last years inventingways to defend his home city of Syracuse against the Romans. The famousintellectual centre of Ptolemaic Alexandria was home to Ctesibius, a mili-tary engineer who wrote a technical treatise on torsion artillery in the thirdcentury. It also seems that the rise of these specialists was closely linked tothe rise of what might be called the military monarchs in the fourth cen-tury bc. The unitary authority and autonomy of the king or tyrant was aprerequisite for the type of command structure in which a specialist could



operate effectively, building up a corps of well-equipped and technicallyproficient engineers.

The military operations of Philip V of Macedon in Greece in the latterpart of the third century show that he could deploy a wide range of siegeand assault methods. He took Ambracus and Psophis by storm in 219

and 218 (Polyb. 4.61–3, 70–2), he surrounded Phthiotic Thebes with adouble rampart, protected by stone- and bolt-throwing catapults, and thenundermined a section of the walls in 217 (Polyb. 5.99–100), underminedboth the outer wall and a newly built inner one at Abydus in 201 (Polyb.16.30–4), and in 198 at Eretria on Euboea he made a surprise attack at nightand took the city virtually unopposed (Livy 32.16). This brief survey ofthe sieges of Philip V includes examples of the three main forms whichattacks on cities and fortifications took in this period – assault, blockadeand surprise.

3. Assault

The simplest way to overcome city walls was with ladders. In Bactria in329, Alexander took a succession of small towns by direct assault, usingscaling ladders under the cover of a barrage from his catapults, javelinsmen archers, slingers. No siege works were required, although at the largesttown, Cyropolis, he was preparing to use his siege engines to assault thewalls and make a breach when it was discovered that the channels of a dried-up water course provided a much easier entry (Arr. Anab. 4.2–3). Whenthe walls could not be easily scaled, the preferred method of assaulting astrong fortification was to create a breach or weakness in it and exploit theopening with a strong force. This was the approach favoured by Philip IIand Alexander, when circumstances permitted. The capture of Amphipolisin 357, Philip II’s earliest siege victory, resulted from the rapid exploitation ofa breach in the city walls created by battering rams (Diod. Sic. 16.8.2–3). AtTyre in 332, Alexander’s breakthrough was achieved through his successfuldeployment of his ship-borne artillery and rams against one of the weakersections of the city wall on the southern side. Having created a breach, hewaited for calm weather before he moved other engines into place to widenit, then he personally led his elite troops, the Hypaspists, into the breachand took control of a substantial section of the city walls. He quickly pouredmore of his Macedonian troops into the city and forced the defenders toabandon their walls. Tyre fell very quickly once this assault had achievedits primary objective (Arr. Anab. 2.18–24).

Defenders often tried to forestall such attacks by building a second wallinside the one being battered or undermined, as was done at Perinthusin 340 (Diod. Sic. 16.74) and Lilybaeum in 250 (Polyb. 1.42–8). Thedetermination of both attackers and defenders would lead to protracted


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contests of battering, mining, re-building and counter-mining. So Polybiusdescribes the siege of Abydus by Philip V of Macedon in 201. The king’sengineers mined underneath the city’s outer wall and caused sections of itto collapse, but the defenders had by this time erected a second wall, whichthe sappers also undermined. The defenders began a counter-mining oper-ation, but abandoned this in favour of fighting to defend the breach inthe second wall (Polyb. 16.30–4). Mining and battering, or boring, werethe most commonly used methods of breaching walls throughout thisperiod.

4. Siege artillery

The invention of the catapult seems to have occurred around 399 in Syracusein the reign of Dionysius I, who gathered together experts in armamentsto prepare for his campaign against the Carthaginians. Diodorus says(14.42.1): ‘Artillery was discovered at that time in Syracuse, a natural conse-quence of the assembly in one place of the most skilful craftsmen fromall over the world.’ According to Diodorus, this was also the context forthe developments of the polyremes (see ch. 11b in this volume). The ear-liest form of artillery was the gastraphetes or ‘belly bow’, an early form ofcrossbow. It was a large composite bow, of such power that it could notbe drawn and fired by hand alone, so it required devices to enable firing,including ratchets, a slider and a trigger mechanism, plus the characteristicstock with its semi-circular belly rest, to enable the operator to lean hisfull weight against the bow as he drew it back. In the mid-fourth century,the size and power of the machines was increased by mounting them onsolid frames and using winches to pull back the arms of the bow. Thesenon-torsion catapults could fire bolts of great length (1.8 m/6 feet or more)over long distances (up to 274m/300 yards). The next development, whichoccurred in the second half of the fourth century, was the invention oftorsion artillery, utilizing tightly wound and stretched hair or sinew ropesto increase the power of the bow element.

The invention of torsion catapults seems to have occurred as a result of aconcentration upon improving the techniques of siege warfare in Macedo-nia at this time. It was centred on Philip’s leading siege engineer, Polyidusthe Thessalian. By 345 an Athenian comic writer could raise a laugh bydescribing the warlike Macedonians as swallowing swords, eating spearsand arrow heads, sitting on shields with slings and bows as their footstools,‘crowned with catapults’.170 Philip captured Amphipolis in 357 by breach-ing the walls with the use of siege engines (mechanas) and battering rams(Diod. 16.8.2). This suggests a keen early interest in siege warfare. Polyidus

170 Mnesimachus Philip F7 (Edmonds 1957: 366–8).



Figure 13.5 Bronze triple-finned triple bolt head inscribed for Philip of Macedon.

had developed his torsion catapults by 340, when they were used againstPerinthus and Byzantium. The defensive uses of catapults were graduallyrecognized across the Greek world. In 340 Perinthus was defended againstPhilip II by catapults, with ammunition supplied by Byzantium (Diod.16.74.4; 75.2). Philip’s siege of Olynthus certainly involved the use of cata-pults by both sides, as the numerous bolt heads that have been found thereshow (fig. 13.5).171

In the period covered by this chapter most cities had to incorporate cat-apults into their defences and to train men to operate them.172 In 295–294,Agathocles made a successful attack against Croton and Hipponion using acombination of stone-throwers, mining and boring operations (Diod. Sic.21 4.1; 8.1), which suggests that by about 300, torsion catapults were to befound in Sicily. An inscription from Ceos records an early third-centurylaw about duties of the gymnasiarch in preparation for a festival that appar-ently included javelin-throwing, archery and catapult-firing competitionsfor the young men, compulsory three times per month (Syll.3 iii.958). TheRhodians had a special interest in artillery and kept up with the latestdevelopments, helped by close ties with Alexandria. Philo says that heinspected a catapult in the Rhodian arsenal that had been constructed by

171 Snodgrass (1967) 116–17. 172 See Marsden (1969) ch. 3.


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Dioynsius of Alexandria (Philo, Belopoeica 73).173 Catapults also becameessential for anyone attempting to assault a city. Philip V of Macedonwas regularly employing artillerymen towards the end of the third century.His use of catapults included deploying both bolt- and stone-throwingtypes to prevent the defenders of Palos in Cephallenia from interferingwith siege works (Polyb. 5.4.6). The following year at Phthiotic Thebes hepositioned 150 bolt-throwers and 25 stone-throwers in towers along his for-tifications (Polyb. 5.99.9). Just as important as the catapults and the skilledoperators was ammunition of the right size for these increasingly well-calibrated machines. In 218 the city of Psophis fell to Philip V’s assault partlybecause the defenders ran out of bolts and shot for their catapults (Polyb.4.71).

Philip V used catapults against the Aetolians in his siege of PhthioticThebes in 217. He had 150 bolt-throwing and 25 stone-throwing cata-pults (Polyb. 5.99.7). A similar ratio of bolt- to stone-throwers (6:1) can beobserved among those captured by Scipio at New Carthage in 209 (Livy26.47.5–6). Catapults hurling bolts could be used to clear away defenderson walls to allow easy access for ladders or towers or for the approach ofsappers. The larger stone-throwers were used to disable defensive catapultsand knock down sections of battlements, depriving the defenders of cover.When Demetrius I attacked Salamis in 306 and Rhodes in 305 he usedstone- and bolt-throwers in a huge mobile siege tower (the helepolis or ‘citytaker’) to bombard the walls, covering the work of battering rams.

Catapults were also deployed on ships in order to bombard a besiegedmaritime city, as in the case of Alexander at Tyre in 332, who used his horse-transport ships and his triremes to provide firing platforms. DemetriusPoliorcetes’ attacks against Rhodes in 305–4 made effective use of ship-mounted catapults against the city’s harbour areas (Diod. Sic. 20.85–90).174

Ships were used as platforms for assault towers and ladders, which weresometimes called sambucae, as at Syracuse in 214. In response, Archimedesdevised a machine to hook onto approaching ships, pull them up and causethem to capsize (Livy 24.34).

The development of technically complex machinery like catapults putgreater emphasis on the need for the professionals who designed, built andoperated them. In addition, large armies, like those of Alexander, or Philip

173 The Rhodians kept themselves well supplied with catapults, hair and sinew cords, bolts andstones. After the earthquake of 227, gifts to the Rhodians from cities and monarchs anxious to see theirpower and security maintained included catapults, hair and resin, which was probably used to protectsprings from water (Polyb. 5.88–9).

174 Further examples of (siege) artillery mounted on ships: 213–11, siege of Syracuse (Livy 24.34.5);211, Roman ships at Anticyra (Livy 26.26.3); 209, Roman warships and merchantmen at Tarentum (Livy27.14.5); 209, Laelius has artillery on ships at siege of New Carthage (Livy 26.44.10; Polyb. 10.12.2);204, Scipio at Utica (Livy 30.4.10; App. Pun. 16).



V of Macedon, needed knowledgeable and skilled men to make siege towersand battering rams and to supervise mining operations. A corps of suchmen was certainly in existence by the end of Philip II of Macedon’s reign.They also operated under Alexander in his early campaign in the Balkans in335, where Arrian mentions them covering his withdrawal at a river crossing(Arr. Anab. 1.6.8). A siege train would consist of a relatively small groupof men who carried with them specialist equipment, like the metal fittingsfor torsion catapults, and who could easily manufacture other items. Theycertainly did not do all the construction work. Basic work like diggingditches and making scaling ladders would be done by the companies ofmen that were going to use them. The siege train may also have includedskilled carpenters and joiners, who could have doubled up as soldiers. Ifa general or king knew that he was setting out on a campaign of siegewarfare then he would probably take such men with him, but otherwisethey could be recruited on the spot. The key specialists were the engineers(mechanopoioi), men like those whom Alexander collected for the siege ofTyre in 332 from Cyprus and Phoenicia, who combined their expertisewith that of Alexander’s own engineers to devise and construct the variousmachines which were used against the city (Arr. Anab. 2.21.1).

5. Defensive fortifications

An increasing sophistication and determination was exhibited by besiegersduring the fourth and third centuries, partly as a necessary response toimprovements in fortification walls that had been introduced in the pre-vious hundred years. A wealthy state like Syracuse or Athens could affordto have numerous well-fortified centres of defence.175 With the increase inattempts to batter walls and storm fortifications, and the adoption of tor-sion artillery, walls had to be strengthened and defences made more robust(fig. 13.6). Bossed stonework was one solution to the problem of batter-ing. Towers and battlements, strong enough to withstand stone-throwingcatapults, were added to allow defenders more scope for firing missiles atwould-be attackers, including sappers (fig. 13.7). Sally ports were used incity walls to allow the defenders to counterattack. Ditches and moats wereadded to make mining more challenging and also to try to push catapultsback from the walls, but they could quite easily be overcome by filling andbridging.176 At Syracuse in 213 Archimedes had the existing walls pierced atlower points to enable missiles to be fired at attackers who were very closeto the walls (Polyb. 8.5.6; Livy 24.34.9). In general, the advantage lay withthe attackers, provided they had sufficient resources of men and materialsto see the job through.

175 See Lauter (1992). 176 See McNicoll (1982), (1997);Winter (1982); Lawrence (1979).


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Figure 13.6 The walls of Heraclea under Latmos in Asia Minor.

6. Blockade

If a city could not be taken by a direct assault, then it might be forced tosurrender through a blockade. Often this would involve a circumvallation,such as those which the Romans erected around Lilybaeum in 250 andCapua in 212. They comprised double rows of ditches and ramparts, usually



Figure 13.7 Tower at Perge with three large artillery ports.

linking larger fortified camps, and were aimed as much at keeping relievingforces out as hemming the besieged population in. At Capua, Hannibalalmost managed to break through to the city with the aid of some elephants,but he was driven back (Livy 26.5–6). Sometimes circumvallation was justthe prelude to an assault, as in the case of the Syracusan attack on Crotonin 295 (Diod. Sic. 21.4.1).

Where a city was on the coast and had good harbour facilities, effectiveblockading was very difficult. During the siege of Perinthus in 340, Philip IIwas compelled to break off his attempts to storm the city in order to attackByzantium, which was supplying Perinthus by sea. In the Second PunicWar the length of the siege of Syracuse was partly due to the impossibilityof stopping Carthaginian fleets from getting in and out of the harbour withsupplies, reinforcements and communications. The exploits of Hannibalthe Rhodian at Lilybaeum are a good example of ‘blockade running’ andattempts to prevent it (Polyb. 1.46.4–13). Hannibal used a particularly well-built, fast ship with an experienced crew and determined marines, plus local


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knowledge of shoals, to run the Romans’ attempted blockade several timesand encourage others to do so as well, Thus he kept the Carthaginians incommunication with their commander Adherbal at Drepana, in spite ofefforts of the Romans in their ten fastest ships. He was captured, however,when the Romans took over a particularly well-built Carthaginian ‘four’that had run aground and been abandoned. They put their own hand-picked crew and marines on board and chased him on one of his night-time sorties out of the harbour. They overhauled his ship and succeededin boarding and capturing it. The defenders of Lilybaeum eventually tookadvantage of a fierce gale to set fire to the Romans’ siege towers, engines,battering rams and protective penthouses. Because of the strong winds theRomans found it very difficult to put the fires out and were hampered bymissile fire from the city’s defenders. So complete was the destruction thatthe Romans abandoned their attempt to assault the city and break throughthe walls, settling instead for a very long siege that became the focus of theentire war.

The psychological impact of the various mechanical devices which weredeployed in sieges in this period may have been almost as important astheir tactical effectiveness. Philip II’s siege train was a new and shockingdevelopment in the Greek world. Constructions like the mole built byAlexander’s men at Tyre, the Helepolis towers of Demetrius I Poliorcetes,and Archimedes’ devices used in the siege of Syracuse, had a tremendousimpact on the morale of both attackers and defenders.

7. Surprise

A sudden, unheralded attack on a city or fortress might succeed if therewere not good defences in place. Alexander tried to surprise Myndus in334 with an attack that was swift because he did not bring any of his siegetrain, but after collapsing one of its towers he failed to breach the walls andwithdrew (Arr. Anab. 1.7.10). In 251 the Achaeans captured the city of Sicyonby scaling its walls on ladders that could be taken to pieces, transported bycart and quickly reassembled (Plut. Arat. 4–8). When the Romans attackedChalcis on Euboea in 200 just before dawn, they achieved complete surprisebecause the defenders were still asleep (Livy 31.23.4). Philip V managed asimilar attack on Eretria in 198 (Livy 32.16.5). Another often successful wayof capturing a city was through treachery. The final capitulation of Syracusein 212 is a good example of this. The Roman commander Marcus ClaudiusMarcellus used the opportunity provided by the visit of a delegation fromthe city to infiltrate an agent who suborned one of the Spanish mercenarycommanders. It was this commander who allowed Marcellus’ soldiers intothe city via a gate in the section of the wall that his men were supposedto be guarding (Livy 25.30). In the same year, the Romans lost control of



Tarentum because some of the local aristocracy arranged to let his troops inthrough a gate that one of their number had regularly been using at night,pretending to be going out hunting (Livy 25.7–8).

8. Food supplies and logistics

There were major logistical problems for the commanders of all ancientarmies, but siege warfare created particular difficulties. All ancient armieswere voracious consumers of basic necessities, such as water, food andfodder, and to keep an army in a single place for a long period of time thecommander needed to have a secure and dependable supply of water, foodand, if there were significant numbers of horses and other animals, goodforage and fodder. The siege operations conducted by Alexander the Greatalong the Levantine coast in 332 have been studied by Engels in his detailedanalysis of Alexander’s logistical requirements and the methods which heemployed to meet them.177 Engels has shown how, when a besieging armydevoted a substantial amount of its forces to the secondary task of obtainingsupplies and materials, its offensive capacity would be reduced accordingly.The obvious solution to this dilemma was to obtain the supplies withoutdeploying too large a proportion of the combat personnel, which is what ledAlexander to demand provisions from the Jewish high priests at Jerusalem in332, while he was engaged in the siege of Tyre (Joseph. AJ 11.317–19). Engels’study demonstrates, however, that the meagre resources of the Palestiniancoastal plain could not possibly have been sufficient to provide Alexanderand his forces with adequate supplies of essentials like grain and water.The considerable naval forces which he accumulated at Tyre and also usedat Gaza must have been vital for his logistical needs, helping to bring insupplies from further afield.

If the besiegers did run short of basic supplies, they ran the risk of havingto abandon a siege. The Roman siege of Agrigentum (262/1) was markedby supply problems for both sides. The Romans encircled the city withdouble ditches, pickets and fortified posts to prevent the secret infiltra-tion of supplies that Polybius says was usual when cities were besieged(Polyb. 1.18.3). Since the city was very crowded, with at least 50,000 peo-ple according to Polybius (1.18.7), it soon began to run short of supplies.However, the Romans also suffered from illness and deprivation, especiallyafter a Carthaginian relief force under Hanno captured their supply depotat Herbesus. Only the provision of supplies by their ally Hiero of Syracusekept the Romans going (Polyb. 1.18.9–11).178

177 Engels (1978) 54–60. 178 See Lazenby (1993) 56–8.


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9. Siege conditions for defenders

It is clear from several ancient accounts that the defenders and inhabitantsof a city under siege might have to endure extremely harsh conditions. Ifa city was so closely invested that the blockade on supplies was total, thenthe population would eventually suffer from malnutrition and starvation,as happened at Numantia in 133 (App. Hisp. 96). Water might also be aproblem, although most ancient cities had good supplies. In the summerof 212 a plague swept through both attackers and defenders at Syracuse,causing great loss of life in the city and prompting the Carthaginian admiralBomilcar to risk attack by the Roman fleet rather than keep his ships inthe harbour (Livy 25.26–7).179 In some cases cities that had anticipatedunpleasant sieges removed their non-combatants to safety. Some of thewomen and children of Tyre were sent to Carthage in 332 and so avoidedthe fate of those captured by Alexander (Diod. Sic. 17.46.4).

For Aeneas the Tactician, writing in the first half of the fourth century,the active role of women in a city that was under attack was limited tohurling roof-tiles at the enemy once they were inside the walls, a desperatemeasure which could occasionally have a significant impact. Pyrrhus ofEpirus was killed as the result of being hit by a tile (reputedly thrown bya woman) at Argos in 272 (Plut. Pyrrh. 34).180 Aeneas also mentions aninstance of women being used to swell the numbers of the defenders on thewalls, although it is noticeable that they were equipped with bronze utensils,rather than real weapons and armour (Aen. Tac. 40). In the desperation of asiege, other social and political distinctions might be abandoned. Accordingto Diodorus, the Thebans recruited metics and freed slaves to man thewalls of their city against Alexander’s army in 335 (Diod. Sic. 17.11.2). TheSyracusans offered freedom to slaves in 214 to boost the numbers of thoseprepared to defend the city against the Romans (Livy 24.32.4). The desire toavoid the humiliation of submission to the enemy was sometimes so greatthat besieged populations committed suicide rather than surrender. In 201

the citizen men of Abydus, realizing that they could no longer resist theassaults of Philip V of Macedon, resolved together to kill themselves andtheir families; the king granted them three days to carry out their wishes,which they did by a variety of means, including hanging, cutting throats,burning and jumping off roof-tops (Polyb. 16.32–5).

The consequences of defeat varied considerably, but they were oftendisastrous. Defeated populations could expect to be despoiled, dispossessed,enslaved or even executed, depending upon the victorious commander’sattitude to their resistance. In 353 the Athenian general Chares captured

179 See Lazenby (1978) 117. 180 See Barry (1996).



Sestos and massacred the citizens, selling their women and children intoslavery. In the same year Philip II allowed the inhabitants of Methone toleave their city dressed only in a single garment. Thus the treatment of thefamous city of Thebes by Alexander and the Greeks in 336 was consideredharsh in antiquity, but it was by no means rare. Many of the inhabitantswere slaughtered in the capture of the city, which was then destroyed and thesurvivors sold into slavery (Diod. Sic. 17.14.3). Alexander’s attitude could bequite different, as in the case of the city of Miletus. He allowed some of itsGreek defenders to join his army, but his men killed the Persians. Fierce orstubborn resistance would be answered by brutal slaughter of survivors, ashappened to the Tyrians in 332, 2,000 of whom were crucified after the fallof the city (Diod. Sic. 17.46.4; Curt. 4.4.17). The ancient sources includestories of chivalry and barbarity after the end of sieges in roughly equalmeasure.181 Livy and Polybius try to present the Romans as more restrainedby virtue of their superior discipline, but it is clear from their accounts thatthe emotions of soldiers who had endured the physical and mental stressesand strains of a siege were regularly released in an orgy of rape, murder,pillage and destruction over which their commanders exercised little directcontrol.182

The settling of old scores was also a common reason for harsh treatment.At Iliturgi in 207 Scipio Africanus’ men massacred the inhabitants afterthey stormed the city. Appian claims that this was a spontaneous reactionto the fact that their commander had been wounded in the assault, butit seems more likely that, as Livy suggests, the Romans were exacting adeliberate revenge for the betrayal of Roman refugees to the Carthaginiansafter the defeat of Scipio’s father and uncle in 211 (App. Hisp. 32; Livy28.19).183 Plundering by the victorious army was almost inevitable. It isarguable that there were no commonly agreed conventions, and that theparticular circumstance of each siege determined what would be done withthe inhabitants.184 In 146 the Romans displayed a ruthless indifference,sacking and destroying both Carthage and Corinth, bringing ruin to twoof the greatest cities of the ancient world.185

181 For discussions of the treatment of captured cities see Kern (1999) chs. 9, 13.182 See Harris (1979) 50–3, 263–4; Ziolkowski (1993). 183 See Richardson (2001) 131.184 This was often the case in medieval warfare, for which see France (forthcoming).185 The former had held out for three years and was a long-standing enemy of Rome, whereas the

latter had surrendered after a pitched battle. Nevertheless in both cases the populations were enslavedand the cities destroyed.


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