Roman Siege Relief with a Ram, Siege Towers and Engines, Montfaucon, 1722

This is an original antique copper engraving, uncolored, a double page folding plate on siege engines. The upper half is a single siege relief. At the left, soldiers in helmets with round and oval shields climb sloping screens and a framed structure, some sheltering under raised shields; from a tall upright frame a beam ending in a ram's head is thrust toward the defenses. At the right a line of soldiers with shields climbs a rocky slope toward a wall, where bearded defenders lean out with outstretched arms beside a building. The lower half is given to the machines, each drawn as a separate diagram: towers on wheels, a sloping roofed shed on wheels, scaling ladders and bridges, windlasses and lifting frames, wheeled screens, a crossbow with its bolt, a boat shaped frame set with spikes, a pointed beam hung from two posts, and towers of masonry.

No source captions are engraved on this plate. The figures carry small numbers from 1 to 22, the relief being number 1 and several numbers repeated among the machines. The corners are lettered "Vol·IV." at foot left, "Plate 29" at foot right and "Page 80" at top right.

The plate comes from the fourth volume of Antiquity Explained, and Represented in Sculptures, the English translation by David Humphreys of the work of Bernard de Montfaucon (1655 to 1741), a French Benedictine monk and scholar. His L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures appeared in Paris in 1719, and this edition was printed in London by J. Tonson and J. Watts in 1722. Volume four deals with war, and this plate belongs to its account of the siege. Montfaucon drew together figures copied from ancient monuments, coins, gems and the publications of earlier antiquaries, and engraved the name of each source beside its figure.

The many small machines reward a close look, and the wide format suits a long wall.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.