poliorcsis

Poliorcics, also spelled poliorcetics or poliorcēsis, is the art and science of siege warfare—the practice of attacking and defending fortified places. It encompasses the planning, engineering, and logistics of besieging, as well as the defenses and countermeasures used to resist sieges. Core elements include the design and deployment of siege engines (such as towers, rams, ladders, and catapults), mining and countermining, sapping, circumvallation and contravallation lines, provisioning for besieged populations, and psychological and strategic aspects of siege operations.

Historically, poliorcics is documented in ancient Greek and Hellenistic military literature as a distinct area of military knowledge, closely linked with fortification, engineering, and logistics. The field gained particular notoriety through prominent siege campaigns in which besiegers demonstrated technical and tactical prowess. The Macedonian king Demetrius I, known as Poliorcetes or “the Besieger,” earned his epithet for his sieges during the early Hellenistic period, including the famous siege of Rhodes. Over time, the subject continued to be discussed in Roman, medieval, and early modern military writings as siegecraft and military engineering evolved, though modern scholarship often aggregates these topics under the broader term siege warfare rather than the classical designation poliorcics.

See also: siege warfare, military engineering, fortification, siege engine.