Warfare In Vitruvius's Ten Books On Architecture

Throughout history we learn about the use of artillery on troops and cities. Artillery allows armies to cause death and destruction upon their opponents from long distances, but these machines are not easy or cheap to produce so were often used sparingly. Standardization allowed for more uniform prices of artillery that had a standard type of caliber can be mass produced by military at a cheaper price. Soon enough standardization would be able to apply to cannons that could provide artillery units with nearly identical pieces of artillery. The evolution of artillery changed the face of warfare with the origins of standardization through the Roman Army, and continuing through much of Europe with the resurrection of organized kingdoms and empires

The Roman Empire was built upon an extremely well-coordinated and trained fighting force that could do a multitude of tasks. One of the important jobs in the army was the maintaining of the field equipment, this task was well documented by authors such as Vitruvius, who in his Ten Books On Architecture goes into detail about everything from the shape to the creation ammunition. Vitruvius’s, Ten Books On Architecture, is a detailed story about how to be an architect during the Classical Era, but it also references Vitruvius’s time when he worked for the artillery in the Roman Legions. In the first paragraph about the weapon he references the idea of standardization by saying “No Ballista, however, is made without regard to the given amount of weight if the stone which the engine is intended to throw.” Vitruvius is referencing that all ballistae are meant to throw a certain weight of stone, instead of trying to find stones that fit the Ballista. Standardization was not something foreign to the Roman Legions, they built the famous Roman roads that followed a strict standard that made the roads last to this day. Also, Organization and standardization was one of the major reasons the Roman Empire was so successful in its conquests. Sadly, this Roman Idea of Standardization was soon forgotten by its successor states and was only accelerated by the invention of gunpowder. The costs of owning a standing army was extraordinarily expensive, so to combat the costs many rulers decided to contract mercenaries that would be paid to fight a war then be released from service after the war. Still this technique was used sparingly since most mercenaries were expensive. The same could be said for the use of artillery since making cannons were expensive they would simply attempt to make a cannon that would not break under the intense pressure of firing,