Hero of Byzantium
Encyclopedia
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...
author of a poliorketikon, an illustrated manual of siegecraft, dating from circa 950
950
Year 950 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.- Europe :* Duke Boleslav I of Bohemia makes peace with Otto I....
. He is also credited with the Geodaesia, a work in practical geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
and ballistics
Ballistics
Ballistics is the science of mechanics that deals with the flight, behavior, and effects of projectiles, especially bullets, gravity bombs, rockets, or the like; the science or art of designing and accelerating projectiles so as to achieve a desired performance.A ballistic body is a body which is...
which makes use of locations around Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
to illustrate its points. His Poliorketikon was an adaptation of an earlier (c. 100
100
Year 100 was a leap year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Traianus and Frontinus...
) poliorcetic manual of Apollodorus
Apollodorus
Apollodorus of Athens son of Asclepiades, was a Greek scholar and grammarian. He was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius the Stoic, and the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace...
, but in place of the static two-dimensional diagrams of that work, the Byzantine author has used a three-dimensional perspective and scaled human figures to clarify the passages. Further, there are passages or techniques from Athenaeus Mechanicus, Philo of Byzantium
Philo of Byzantium
Philo of Byzantium , also known as Philo Mechanicus, was a Greek engineer and writer on mechanics, who lived during the latter half of the 3rd century BC...
and Biton. The translated manuscript in the Vatican Library consists of 58 folios and 38 colored illustrations. As artillery
Artillery
Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons...
had not yet become a factor in siegecraft, the machines themselves tend to be those useful for advancing a force up to fortification
Fortification
Fortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defence in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
s and mining them once situated. Hero includes tortoises (Gr. Χηλοναι), a new Slavic
Slavic peoples
The Slavic people are an Indo-European panethnicity living in Eastern Europe, Southeast Europe, North Asia and Central Asia. The term Slavic represents a broad ethno-linguistic group of people, who speak languages belonging to the Slavic language family and share, to varying degrees, certain...
style of tortoise called laisai (Gr. λαισαι) created by interwoven branches and vines, palisade
Palisade
A palisade is a steel or wooden fence or wall of variable height, usually used as a defensive structure.- Typical construction :Typical construction consisted of small or mid sized tree trunks aligned vertically, with no spacing in between. The trunks were sharpened or pointed at the top, and were...
s, rams
Battering ram
A battering ram is a siege engine originating in ancient times and designed to break open the masonry walls of fortifications or splinter their wooden gates...
, ladder
Ladder
A ladder is a vertical or inclined set of rungs or steps. There are two types: rigid ladders that can be leaned against a vertical surface such as a wall, and rope ladders that are hung from the top. The vertical members of a rigid ladder are called stringers or stiles . Rigid ladders are usually...
s, nets, towers, bridges, and tools such as augur
Augur
The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they are flying in groups/alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of...
s and bore
Bore
Bore may refer to:* Bore , the diameter of a cylinder in a piston engine* Bore , the interior chamber of a wind instrument* Bore , a district of Ethiopia that includes the town of Bore* Boré, Mali...
s.
Sources
- "Byzantine Siege Warfare in Theory and Practice" by Eric McGeer from The Medieval City under Siege.
- Porter, Pamela. Medieval Warfare in Manuscripts.