Claw of Archimedes

The Claw (Greek: Ἁρπάγη, harpágē, "snatcher") of Archimedes was an ancient weapon devised by Archimedes to defend the seaward portion of Syracuse's city wall against amphibious assault. Although its exact nature is unclear, the accounts of ancient historians seem to describe it as a sort of crane equipped with a grappling hook that was able to lift attacking ships partly out of the water, then either cause the ship to capsize or suddenly drop it.

These machines featured prominently during the Second Punic War in 214 BC, when the Roman Republic attacked Syracuse with a fleet of at least 120 Quinqueremes under Marcus Claudius Marcellus. When the Roman fleet approached the city walls under cover of darkness, the machines were deployed, sinking many ships and throwing the attack into confusion. Historians such as Polybius and Livy attributed heavy Roman losses to these machines, together with catapults also devised by Archimedes.

The plausibility of this invention was tested in 1999 in the BBC series Secrets of the Ancients and again in early 2005 in the Discovery Channel series Superweapons of the Ancient World. The producers of Superweapons brought together a group of engineers tasked with conceiving and implementing a design that was realistic, given what we know about Archimedes. Within seven days they were able to test their creation, and they did succeed in tipping over a model of a Roman ship so that it would sink. While this does not prove the existence of the Claw, it suggests that it would have been possible.

Further reading

• Chris Rorres, Harry Harris: A Formidable War Machine: Construction and Operation of Archimedes’ Iron Hand, Symposium on Extraordinary Machines and Structures in Antiquity, Olympia, Greece, August 19-24, 2001, pp.1-18
• C. K. Young: Archimedes's iron hand or claw – a new interpretation of an old mystery, Centaurus, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Dec. 2004), pp. 189-207

External links

• Scale models of the Claw's operation
• BBC Secrets of the Ancients: The Claw
• Polybius History