Siege Warfare 500BC-500AD

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the rule of Philip II would have a new type of soldier called the phalangite. They were the same concept as the Greek hoplite but were much more effective. The spear was replaced by a much longer weapon called the sarisa which had a length of roughly 18 feet. The hoplites and the phalangites would both fight in the phalanx position which would have lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, with a typical depth of eighteen men and a width of ten men.
An early form of capturing a city, as explained by Herodotus, was that "[Harpagus] enclosed them in their towns, and by piling up embankments against the walls he captured them" (Hdt. 1.162). This allowed his Persian foot soldiers to run up these ramps and take the city by storm. A quicker but less effective, although more common, way of besieging a city would be to carry tall ladders to scale the walls of the city. As siege ladders became more popular, one man by the name of Aeneas Tacitus, who was an Arcadian general in the 360's BC, ...

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stone falls" (Pol. 3.8-9). A man or small group of men would control the rope which was attached to the chute releasing it when besiegers were underneath. In most cases, the people of the city being besieged would concentrate their stone dropping on enemies using siege machinery such as battering rams or, as stated before, ladder climbers.
When Alexander started his campaign in 335, he was left with only a handful of his father's engineers and in the spring of 335, we get our first look at Alexander and the use of siege engines under his reign as he was getting flanked from behind by the Taulantians. Alexander set up what little siege engines, the ballista in this scenario, to "fire ...

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