The Catapult: A History (review)

In this excellent study, Tracey Rihll sketches the history of the range of mechanically powered casting weapons included under the rubric "catapult" from their origin in the early fourth century bce up to the sixth century ce, a period of 1,000 years. The geographic scope is equally audacious, covering classical Greece and the empires of Alexander's successors throughout the Near East and Asia Minor, as well as the entirety of the Roman Empire in both its eastern and western halves.

In a very helpful opening section, Rihll introduces the reader to the problems of terminology, sources, and source criticism, and to the historiographical tradition in which the work is located. He notes specifically that it is intended to update the basic works in the field published by Eric William Marsden in 1969 and 1971. In a break from the standard thematic treatment of the history of catapults, Rihll has organized this study chronologically in ten chapters, an approach that has the tremendous advantage of providing the social, political, and economic as well as the military contexts in which developments in catapult technology took place.

Chapter 1 considers slings and bows as the ancestors of the catapult. Here, Rihll also introduces two themes that remain important throughout the study, namely that there was far more variety in the types of weapons that were developed than scholars heretofore have recognized, and that regular experimentation through trial and error was common throughout the 1,000 years covered in this book. Chapter 2 introduces the first tension-powered catapult, the gastraphetes, developed around 399 bce at Syracuse. Rihll also introduces the sound methodological principle of testing narrative sources against the full corpus of available archaeological materials, including finds that had not yet been published at the time he was writing. Chapter 3 breaks from standard historiographical practice regarding the catapult by focusing on the diffusion and development of tension weapons. All too often, scholars have given short shrift to tension catapults, assuming that they quickly became obsolete following the development of torsion weapons. Rihll stresses here, and throughout, that all types of arms continued to be developed and deployed, depending on a wide range of factors, not least of which was the cost of construction.

Chapter 4 introduces torsion catapults, with a focus on their construction and materials as well as their advantages and disadvantages as compared with tension weapons. Chapter 5 challenges the traditional view that catapults were exclusively large-scale artillery. Rihll reinterprets the narrative sources in light of recent archaeological finds to argue for the wide diffusion of small handheld catapults in the armies of the Hellenistic world. Chapter 6 examines the wide variety of catapult types that were developed in the context of the wars among the successor states of Alexander's empire. Rihll provides valuable historical context to help explain the development of specific types of catapults. He also discusses the fundamental technical constraints on mechanical weapons as these were discovered by contemporary engineers.

Chapters 7 and 8 are a paired discussion of the technical treatises composed by Greek and Roman writers, respectively. Here Rihll takes great care to compare the machines described by the technical writers with finds in the ground. Chapter 9 focuses on the deployment and standardization of catapult types by the Roman imperial army. He again successfully reinterprets written sources as well as artistic depictions in light of archaeological material, specifically rejecting the traditional skepticism of scholars regarding the evidentiary value of artistic representations of catapults because they do not show standard types of weapons. Even during the period of relative standardization, innovation persisted. Chapter 10 traces the new variety in catapult designs in the early eastern and western successor states of the Roman Empire as the uniformity imposed by the imperial army began to dissipate.

Rihll includes two appendixes on "the calibration formula and components" of catapults as well as "known catapult remains." There are six useful maps and several dozen valuable illustrations and images of catapults that provide a visual context for...