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Updated: May 3, 2025
Then the Rhodians, freed from the war by the cunning of Diognetus, thanked him publicly, and decorated him with all honours and distinctions. Diognetus brought that helepolis into the city, set it up in a public place, and put on it an inscription: "Diognetus out of the spoils of the enemy dedicated this gift to the people."
The machines were set up on the terrace, although the latter did not as yet reach everywhere to the height of the rampart. Before the twenty-three towers on the fortification stood twenty-three others of wood. All the tollenos were mounted again, and in the centre, a little further back, appeared the formidable helepolis of Demetrius Poliorcetes, which Spendius had at last reconstructed.
The helepolis, also used in the attack on cities, was a square tower furnished with all the means of assault. This also was a Greek invention; and the one used by Demetrius at the siege of Rhodes, B. C. 306, was one hundred and thirty-five feet high and sixty-eight wide, divided into nine stories. The turris, a tower of the same class, was used both by Greeks and Romans, and even by Asiatics.
The great machine, as though convulsively upheaved, advanced perhaps ten paces; but the ground softened more and more, the mire reached to the axles, and the helepolis stopped, leaning over frightfully to one side. The catapult rolled to the edge of the platform, and carried away by the weight of its beam, fell, shattering the lower stories beneath it.
He constructed at enormous expense, with the utmost care and exertion, an helepolis one hundred and thirty-five feet high and sixty feet broad. He strengthened it with hair and rawhide so that it could withstand the blow of a stone weighing three hundred and sixty pounds shot from a ballista; the machine itself weighed three hundred and sixty thousand pounds.
The water was flowing insensibly along the terrace, and strange to say, it seemed to cause Hamilcar no anxiety. But when the helepolis was thirty paces off, he commanded planks to be placed over the streets between the houses from the cisterns to the rampart; and a file of people passed from hand to hand helmets and amphoras, which were emptied continually.
After a great amount of water, filth, and excrement had been poured out during the night, on the next day the helepolis moving up, before it could reach the wall, came to a stop in the swamp made by the moisture, and could not be moved forwards, nor later even backwards. And so Demetrius, when he saw that he had been baffled by the wisdom of Diognetus, withdrew with his fleet.
When Callias was asked by the Rhodians to construct a machine to resist this helepolis, and to bring it within the wall as he had promised, he said that it was impossible.
The vinea was a sort of roof under which the soldiers protected themselves when they undermined walls. The helepolis, also used in the attack of cities, was a square tower furnished with all the means of assault. This also was a Greek invention, and that used by Demetrius at the siege of Rhodes, B.C. 306, was one hundred and thirty-five feet high and sixty- eight wide, divided into nine stories.
Upon this occasion, one of the comic writers gave Lamia the name of the real Helepolis; and Demochares of Soli called Demetrius Mythus, because the fable always has its Lamia, and so had he. And, in truth, his passion for this woman and the prosperity in which she lived were such as to draw upon him not only the envy and jealousy of all his wives, but the animosity even of his friends.
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