"The first stone... fell with such weight and force upon a building that a great part... was destroyed."
Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo(c.1298)
The word catapult came from two Greek words: kata, meaning "downward," and pultos, which refers to a small circular shield. Katapultos was taken to mean "shield piercer." The weapon was said to have been invented in 399 B.C.E. in the Sicilian city of Syracuse and, according to Archimedes, was. derived from a composite bow, which was similar to the crossbow.
Early catapults had a central lever with a counterweight at the opposite end to the projectile basket. Torsion-powered catapults entered into common use in Greece and Macedon around 330 B.C.E. Alexander the Great used them to provide cover on the battlefield as well as during sieges.
The Chinese, Greeks, and Romans used various types of catapults. The ballista, built for Philip of Macedon, was similar to a giant crossbow and, using tension provided by twisted skeins of rope, it could aim heavy bolts, darts, or spears. The trebuchet consisted of a lever and a sling and could be used to hurl large stones. The mangonel, credited to the Romans, fired heavy objects from a bowl-shaped bucket at the end of its single giant arm.
Catapults used as siege weapons were usually constructed on the spot because they were too cumbersome to move around. Sometimes beehives or carcasses of dead animals were catapulted over castle walls to infect those inside. The weapon reached Europe during medieval times and the French used them during their siege of Dover Castle in 1216 C.E. Cannons replaced catapults as the standard European siege weapon in the fourteenth century C.E.
