The ancient city of Pompeii not only reveals a lot about everyday life in Roman times. Its city walls also bear witness to a siege of the city by Roman troops in 89 BC. Analyzes of bullet holes in the ancient wall now suggest that the Romans under their general Sulla used a legendary multi-shot weapon: the polybolos. This could fire several bolts quickly one after the other using a chain-driven mechanism – like a mechanical automatic weapon.
Today, the city of Pompeii is a valuable contemporary witness to life in the Roman Empire. Buried under the layers of ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, remains of the residents and their everyday objects, as well as villas, bathhouses and other buildings, were preserved. But Pompeii was not always Roman: in the sixth century BC the city was predominantly inhabited by Etruscans, and later it belonged to the territory of the Italian Samnites tribe. When the Romans gained dominance over Italy, they forced these tribes into an alliance, but initially did not give them full citizenship – an uprising broke out.
Bullet holes in a regular arrangement
During this Allied War (Bellum Sociale), Pompeii was also the scene of fighting. Because the city was on the side of the rebels, it was besieged by Roman troops under their general Lucius Cornelius Sulla from 89 BC. Traces of the fighting are still visible today on the northern part of the city wall of Pompeii, the only exposed part of the fortification wall built around the city. There are numerous holes in the stones of the wall, which indicate intensive shelling. “These contemporary testimonies have survived Roman reconstructions, natural disasters, the bombs of the Second World War and modern measures,” explain Adriana Rossi from the Vanvitelli University of Campania and her colleagues.
The large holes in the city wall reveal that the Romans used catapults during their siege to shoot heavy sandstone balls at the wall and its defenders. In addition to such larger bullet marks, there are also smaller, noticeably regularly arranged bullet holes in the wall. “These fan-shaped groups of holes are striking not only because of their rectangular shape, but also because of their arcuate arrangement with short, regular intervals,” report Rossi and her team. This means that these holes, which are usually in groups of three or four, differ significantly from the marks left by the large catapult projectiles.
Bolts of a polybolo as the cause?
To find out what could have caused these arcuate bullet holes, Rossi and her team analyzed them in more detail using laser scans and other methods. Using digital 3D models and comparisons with ancient historical sources, they examined which weapons could have left such holes. The archaeologists found the greatest agreement on the holes in a description by the Greek scholar and inventor Philon of Byzantium from the third century BC. In his “Handbook of Mechanics” he reported on a “Polybolos” – a firearm that could fire several metal bolts in quick succession.
The Polybolos had a crank and chain mechanism through which a bolt automatically slipped from a magazine into the firing device after each shot. “The bullets do not scatter, but rather create a path that lies more or less along a segment of a circle,” says Philon, describing the effect of this multi-shot. In principle, the Polybolos was an ancient forerunner of modern repeating and automatic weapons.
Sulla, Sicily and an ancient armory
According to archaeologists, the similarities with the ancient descriptions suggest that the holes in the city wall of Pompeii came from a Polybolos. “The radial configuration and close spacing of the bullet holes in Pompeii make the use of such an automatic weapon plausible,” the archaeologists write. This is supported by the history of the Roman general Sulla: Before his deployment against Pompeii, he was stationed as governor in the province of Cilicia in what is now Türkiye. At that time, this also included the island of Rhodes, where, according to tradition, the polybolos was invented and which was a center of weapons production in ancient times.
“It is therefore plausible that Sulla – a politically experienced and technically skilled commander – used such a multi-shot weapon during the siege of Pompeii,” said the archaeologists. For the Romans, the siege of Pompeii was a success: they broke through the defense lines and walls and conquered the city in 80 BC. Pompeii thus became a Roman colony and its residents increasingly adopted Roman customs over the following decades.
Source: Heritage, doi: 10.3390/heritage9030096