Demetrius Poliorcetes (“The Besieger”)

Plutarch

Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Translated by John Dryden

Demetrius was skilled in directing catapults and battering rams to crush city walls. Demetrius's tortoise-like armored battering rams were 180 feet long and manned by one thousand men, and his giant catapults threw 180-pound stone balls a quarter of a mile. Probably his most fearsome device was an enormous wheeled fortified tower called