Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece

Chapter 452: Siege of Crotone (II)

But before the slaves could even reach the moat, the soldiers in the city began raining arrows on them, causing screams to resound below the city walls suddenly…

Just as Kelebus and his men tried to attack again, the slaves below the city wall shouted, “Stop shooting. I am Sephanus, son of Sthenippus!”

“I am Parrharius! Ascamas' neighbour!!”

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Crotonian soldiers became dazed after learning that the people below the city wall were not slaves but their captured comrades after their defeat in the previous battle.

“Damned Syracusans! Go to hell, Dionysius!!” Ascamas punched the battlements in anger, and blood immediately stained his fist. He did not expect Dionysius to ignore the Greek tradition and let the Greek captives act as cannon fodder.

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

At this moment, Dionysius followed the archers to the earthen ramp. He then looked down at the situation with a sneer on his face. In the previous battle, Syracuse managed to capture nearly 10,000 captives. After intimidating, beating, starving…and torturing them, the Syracusans managed to make the 2,000 captives willingly fill up the city’s moat for Syracuse in exchange for the promise to not be beaten and sold into slavery. Among these 2,000 captives were Crotonians and a small number of Scylletians and Terinians, but no Theonians. On the one hand, they only managed to capture a few Theonians and had exchanged more than half of them to Theonia. On the other hand, Dionysius had other uses for the remaining Bruttian captives, while the pure Greeks and Lucanians were stubborn…

Dionysius didn't think much about this annoying little problem as he was now proud of his strategy and wanted to see how the Crotonians would respond. For this reason, he orders his archers not to shoot their arrows yet, reserving their strength and arrows until the whole army began their attack so that they could clear the obstacles at the top of the city wall for the army.

At the city wall, the adjutant could only ask with urgency, “Strategos, what should we do?!”

Ascamas did not reply immediately. While asking the guards to bandage his left hand, he painfully watches the Syracusans forcing the Crotonian captives to walk towards the moat, throw the linen bags they are carrying and then turn their back to destroy the abatis that the defenders carefully laid.

Ascamas cursed at these traitors. Still, he did not dare to order an attack on them because he remembered Kunogelata, the polemarchos of Thurii. Kunogelata had saved the city by ordering to close the city gate, but because it caused the death of some soldiers, the people did not spare him. They not only expelled Kunogelata but also attacked his family. So if he were to directly order to kill the Crotonian captives, even if they repel the enemy's attack, the families of these captives would sure hate him in the future, and his fate will definitely be worse than Kunogelata!

Ascamas wasn't a muscle head strategos who only knew how to fight. He was elected as a strategos numerous times in Crotone, a powerful Greek city-state with tens of thousands of citizens, which shows that he has a powerful political ability. After quickly weighing the pros and cons, he said to his adjutant, “Immediately go to the city hall and tell the council what is going on here and have them decide what to do.”

After the adjutant left, Ascamas saw that they had almost filled up a small section of the moat. He sighed and ordered his men, “Go and find some ropes, drop them down the wall so that they can grab it and climb up.”

He didn't dare to open the city gates for fear that the Syracusans would take advantage of it to swarm in.

The soldiers then hurriedly found ropes and dropped them. They then shouted at their comrades, “Get over here! Grab the rope and climb up!!”

When they heard this, some of the captives crossed the moat staggeringly. However, the Syracusan light infantry shot arrows at them, easily striking these starved and weakened captives.

Seeing this, the soldiers at the top of the city wall fired back in anger. However, most of their attack failed to hit the Syracusans hiding behind their siege wagons. Instead, they wounded their own countrymen by accident.

This has caused the captives to no longer act rashly.

Seeing the result, Ascamas reluctantly gave up rescuing their comrades.

In the council of Crotone, they were apparently unprepared for Syracuse's use of captives to attack the city and argued fiercely. Even with that, they were still unable to make a decision, which gave the Syracusans plenty of time to let the captives fill in several long sections of the moat and clear the abatis on both of its sides.

Ascamas could only watch with dejection. But he soon cheered himself up, ‘In that case, let's just fight head-on!’

As if hearing Ascamas' inner thoughts, the captives were driven back and never appeared again.

Seeing that everything was ready, Dionysius smugly gave the order on the earthen ramp, “Attack!”

But as soon as his voice fell, he suddenly felt something cold and wet hit his face. When he reached out and touched it, he immediately realised it was water.

‘It's raining?’ Dionysius looked up at teh sky. Without realising it, the sunny sky had become a little gloomy. Although it was only a raindrop, Dionysius became a bit worried because the weight of the siege tower would cause the land to soften from the rain and cause the wheels to sink into the mud and get stuck.

“Hurry up the attack!” He once again issued an order.

Soon, the salpinx rang out on the battlefield.

As stones kept whizzing over the city of Crotone, the enemies under the city wall slowly poured in like tides…

The mixed sound of salpinx, war drums, shouting, footsteps…struck the eardrums of the defenders, causing them to breathe quickly.

“Here they come.” Ascamas whispered. He then picked up his javelin and walked towards the battlements.

At this time, a black dot suddenly flew over the back of his head, followed by another…

He suddenly widened his eyes, looked up and heard the soldiers nearby shouting excitedly, “Our ballista! Our ballista is finally attacking!!…”

‘That's not even Crotone's ballista…’ Ascamas thought. However, he didn't mind it after seeing the soldiers’ morale rise. Instead, he felt fortunate that Theonia stood together with Crotone.

While the Crotonian soldiers were excited, the Syracusans became worried, especially Dionysius. He saw it with his own eyes how almost all the stone projectiles flying out of the city hit near the siege tower not far from the earthen ramp.

Even though he heard Phacipessas say, ‘Theonia also has ballista.’ since he hadn't seen Crotone use it for the first two days, he thought that Theonia had not lent them this complex, expensive and powerful weapons and had instead used it for Aprustum's defence. He did not expect that Crotone had hidden it until now and only started to make its presence known once Syracuse began fully attacking the city.

“Cunning Crotonians!” Dionysius cursed. Even though he knew that the target of the enemy's ballista was the siege towers, he could not do anything besides ordering his men, “Notify our ballista team to attack the area where the enemy might place their ballista in the city!”

Although he was the one who gave the other, Dionysius also knew that their ballista's accuracy was not that great. In addition, it is challenging to hit the target without seeing its position, and they could no longer keep their bombardment as they could accidentally injure their men that are already close to the wall.

Fortunately, with just a few dozen ballistae of the enemy, they could not make much of a splash in the face of their waves of attack. So Dionysius made a quick decision. In his direction, hundreds of archers on the earthen rampart began raining arrows at the top of the city wall to suppress the enemy from attacking their soldiers.

On the other hand, the Crotonian light infantry at the top of the walls began to rain arrows on the enemy approaching the moat.

The Syracusans crossed the filled moat and braved the arrows and javelins thrown by the Crotonians to erect the siege ladders that they were carrying to the walls. The Syracusans had made a special ladder from their siege experience, with curved iron hooks at the end to hook onto the battlements so that the ladders would not easily slip or be pushed down.

Due to the Crotonian soldiers being unable to push down the ladder quickly, they had to throw javelins and stones down to attack the enemy climbing the ladder. They then dump heated oil and set the ladder on fire…

The Syracusan light infantry then came out from the siege wagon, rushed to the bottom of the city wall and shot arrows at the top to reduce the pressure on their comrades…

The last to arrive was Syracuse's siege engines. At the front were those wooden wheeled vehicles with a canopy, which finally made it to the moat. Under the protection of the canopy, the labourers pushing it took up their tools and concentrated on tamping the ground again, filled the gap with soil and paved it with planks to ensure that the heavy siege towers could pass through the moat.

The Theonians placed their ballista a short distance behind the western wall, with wide spacing and had houses surrounding it for safety. However, the widely spread ballistae made it impossible for them to adjust the trajectory using the same data. Furthermore, the ballista team didn't have that much personnel from the Institute of Mathematics. Thus, Kurdorus suggested that the ten ballistae bombard an area or a target simultaneously to increase the number of hits. After the ballista, under his personal command, did the first firing test, the other artillerist would adjust their own firing data according to the height and speed of the stone projectile.

And this suggestion was then accepted by the ballista team. Now, their primary target is the approaching siege tower.

Kurdorus kept his eyes on the spotter holding the coloured flag on the wall. The position he stood was to indicate the direction of the siege tower, and the number he drew in the air with the coloured flag was the distance between the siege tower and the wall. The spotter then pointed the flag to the left and repeated this action twice, then the number he drew after was the direction and distance from which the stone projectile fired by Kurdorus had deviated.

Having missed his first two shots, Kurdorus began to feel the pressure. He wiped the raindrops from his face to clear his vision a little, as he knew that he had to hit the target soon. Otherwise, once the rain fell harder and wet the spring torsion of the ballista, its elastic force would change, making it more difficult to judge the accuracy of the trajectory.