ENGINEER

Life
Demetrius was the son of Antigonus I Monophthalmus, one of the four Diadochi (successors) of Alexander the Great and founder of the Antigonid dynasty. On his father's orders he sailed with a large fleet to Rhodes, and besieged the city by land and by sea (307 BC). This siege has remained famous in military history for the great number of siege engines used, all designed and built by Demetrius and his engineers. The people of Rhodes defended their city with great courage and determination, and in the end Demetrius raised the siege and presented them with the siege engines. He is cited by Vitruvius, Eusebius, Plutarch and Diodorus.


Work
His siege engines included:

- The "Elepolis": The most terrifying of all the siege engines, this a gigantic siege tower was built by Epimachus of Athens.

- Catapults: These were capable of hurling rocks weighing 80 kg a distance of 150 metres.

- The "Tortoise": A rectangular wooden structure mounted on wheels, with a tower tall enough to top the highest walls and equipped with a battering ram run in and out of the protecting tower by a crew of soldiers. The walls of the 'tortoise' were built of clay and sheathed in leather to protect the men inside from the rocks and arrows hurled at them by the enemy from the walls. With its protective shell and the in-and-out movement of the ram, this machine must certainly have looked very much like a giant tortoise butting at the walls.

- Drills: Portable drills 25 metres long, to bore holes through the city walls.

Other constructions:

- The Stoa of Cleisthenes, or Stoa of Demetrius: Sicyon (southern Greece). This rectangular structure, built of local tufa, was 102 metres long and 16 metres wide, with a Doric colonnade of 47 pillars along its open northern facade. The gallery was divided into three parts: the southern section had 20 rooms, while an interior colonnade of 24 pillars divided the remainder into two separate areas. Demetrius built this gallery, probably in 300 BC, as a gift for his friend Lamia. It may well have been raised over the ruins of an earlier gallery, built by Cleisthenes of Sicyon.

The gallery, which lies on the eastern side of the Bouleuterion, was discovered during the course of excavations undertaken by Alexander Philadelphus. One particularly interesting features is its system of storm drains.

- Fortified garrison: for the Macedonian Guard, on the Hill of the Muses, 294 BC.