Diades of

Pella Pella ( el, Πέλλα) is an ancient city located in Central Macedonia, Greece. It is best-known for serving as the capital city of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon, and was the birthplace of Alexander the Great. On site of the ancient cit ...

( grc, Διάδης Πελλαίος ''Diadis Pelleos''), surnamed the "Besieger" ( ''Poliorkitis''), was a

Thessalian Thessaly ( el, Θεσσαλία, translit=Thessalía, ; ancient Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thess ...

inventor of many

siege engines A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent heavy castle doors, thick city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some are immobile, constructed in place to attack enemy fortifications from a distance, while other ...

, student of Philip II's military engineer

Polyidus of Thessaly Polyidus of Thessaly (also Polyides, Polydus; , , English translation: "much beauty", from ''polus'', "many, much" and ''eidos'', "form, appearance, beauty") was an ancient Greek military engineer of Philip, who made improvements in the covered b ...

. He lived in the 4th century BC. Diades accompanied

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...

in his campaigns to the East. He constructed (or improved) movable towers,

battering ram A battering ram is a siege engine that originated in ancient times and was designed to break open the masonry walls of fortifications or splinter their wooden gates. In its simplest form, a battering ram is just a large, heavy log carried b ...

s, scaling engines used to scale walls and battering cranes used for the destruction of city walls. Diades was known as "the man who took Tyre with Alexander".''Alexander the Great'' by W. W. Tarn
/ref> He also wrote a treatise on machinery. (

Vitruvius Vitruvius (; c. 80–70 BC – after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled '' De architectura''. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attribut ...

vii, introduction)

Notes

External links

Technology museum of Thessalonica
Ancient Greek military engineers Engineers of Alexander the Great Ancient Greek engineers Ancient Thessalians Ancient Pellaeans Hellenistic military engineers 4th-century BC Greek people Year of death unknown Year of birth unknown {{Greece-engineer-stub