military

Ammianus on Ram Effects

Date

380

Part of

military

Ammianus also describes rams—the aries—that crack buildings until “the structure of their walls is destroyed” [3]. The cadence of the blow and the dust that follows show mechanical breaching paired with artillery cover. Sound becomes method: thud, thud, crumble.

What Happened

Late Roman prose can make wood feel like iron. Ammianus, in Book 23, writes of the ram—aries—as a core engine whose blows “crack and shatter buildings as the structure of their walls is destroyed” [3]. It’s a line that makes you hear cadence and taste dust.

A ram is a log with a shaped iron head, slung under a roof—the testudo—that protects the crew. It swings as men heave in rhythm, the head kissing stone, then biting, then chewing. The sound is dull and deep; each impact sends a bloom of powder out from the joint between blocks. Above, defenders try to drop fire or stones; behind the shed, a ballista snaps to pick a head off the parapet [1][3].

The sequence is Roman: combine cover and blow. Artifices build the shed and shape the head; crews advance the structure on rollers; when the line calls for pressure, the ram arrives under artillery protection. Frontinus would have approved of the layering—ruse, earth, machine—in one controlled sensorium of attack [7].

Place the scene against a gate at Sirmium. The shed’s hide is pale, stained darker where water has slopped from buckets dousing accidental fires. The air smells of wet leather and hot pitch. In the distance, a commander’s voice carries, then the thud resumes. After dozens of impacts, a crack appears, thin and dark, like a line of ink between stones. The next volley from an onager lands on the wall-walk, clearing men away; the ram swings again; the joint gives [3].

Rams live comfortably alongside late machines. Ammianus’ army is the same army that favors onagers for their brutal stones. The doctrine puts engines behind the line in the field and against walls in the siege. The ram is the last persuasion when bolts and stones have done their mouth-drying work [4][3].

Vitruvius does not give ratios for rams as he does for scorpions, but his influence appears in the insistence on fit and finish—the way the head must be fixed to the beam, the way the frame must be braced. Craft makes thud into crack; crack into breach [1].

Why This Matters

Ammianus’ description of rams reinforces that Roman siegecraft never narrowed to artillery alone. Mechanical breaching—applied with cover and timing—remained central into late antiquity [3]. Artillery’s role was to make rams possible by suppressing defenders and masking approaches.

The event aligns with the theme of speed and fieldworks as weapons. Rams function when earthworks provide approach lanes and when sheds—testudines—can be built and advanced quickly. That speed is artisanal as much as muscular: artifices making the right head, crews pushing under the right roof [4][7].

Across the arc from Veii’s tunnel to Alesia’s double rings to onagers behind infantry lines, the ram stays. Its blunt simplicity connects early improvisation to late doctrine. Even as standardized torsion frames and mobile carts transformed siege arsenals, the deep thud of the aries kept time to the same old song [1][4][3].

For historians, Ammianus’ words give sound and dust to objects that archaeology rarely preserves whole. His prose lets us reconstruct the rhythm of a breach in a way that complements stone clusters and bolt heads.