Sambucca1

Sambuca

c.200BC

"This instrument…offers opportunities for great exploits" Biton, c.240-133BC

 

Sambucas were covered raiseable siege ladders. They appear, usually mounted

on ships, in accounts from c.200BC into the Byzantine Empire in the 700s AD.

The Greek engineer, Biton, writing for Attalos King of Pergamon (in Asia Minor) says that

another engineer, Damais of Colophon, built a mobile land version.

Colophon , western Asia Minor, was under the rule of the Seleucid kings, successors to

Alexander the Great. Biton's dates are not certain but he does

give some basic facts which have been used with secondary accounts to

attempt a reconstruction

"[the base of the machine]…had two parallel axles…the wheels were 3ft in diameter.

…its length 27ft…[on the base was a trestle]…the height of the trestle was 14ft…."

A 15ft axle attached to a capstan ran between the top sides of the trestle. There

was a 12ft bracket on top of the trestle, into which "let a sambuca be inserted 60ft long…

let it be fitted with side walls so that the men mounting on it may make their ascent on it

. Let it have [at the end] a box 6ft all round [with a lead counterweight….At the front

end let the sambuca be broader, in order that access may be easier for those

climbing off onto the wall"**

Polybius, writing of the Roman siege of Syracuse (213-211 BC), says that their sambucas

(carried on ships), used 4ft wide ladders and that the "assault party" was protected

by wicker screens, the front one of which could be dropped to allow them out.

 

**Trans EW Marsden Greek and Roman artillery…Oxford, 1971

 

Done