HOW CATAPULTS WORKED
These terrifying weapons of fortress destruction could slingshot a siege to success
WORDS
SCOTT DUTFIELD
As weapons of ancient and medieval warfare, catapults were instrumental in the siege of countless castles and fortresses. Hurling boulders and flaming projectiles, these devices were the most explosive weapons of war before the use of gunpowder. Early versions of the catapult first emerged in the late-4th century BCE when Dionysius the Elder, ruler of the Greek colony of Syracuse, Sicily, commissioned the production of novel weapons to fight an ancient North African civilisation called Carthage. These weapons, called ballistae, resembled a giant crossbow and used twisted ropes or animal sinew (fibrous tissue) as torsion springs to shoot arrows, spears and other projectiles.