Long Before Machine Guns, Ancient Roman Troops Used This 2,000-Year-Old Rapid-Fire Weapon in Pompeii, New Research Suggests

Ancient Roman forces may have used the polybolos to quell a rebellion at Pompeii in 89 B.C.E. The unique weapon was likely developed by a Greek engineer centuries earlier

Sarah Kuta | Daily Correspondent

April 9, 2026

Share

Copy linkEmailSMSFacebookXRedditLinkedInBlueskyPrint

Add as preferred source

In 89 B.C.E., the residents of Pompeii joined ancient Italian allies in a revolt against the ever-expanding power of the Roman Empire. Roman leaders, however, quickly squashed the uprising, sending in troops led by Lucius Cornelius Sulla to get the city under control.

The Roman army used a variety of weapons to attack Pompeii, including possibly the polybolos, a sophisticated weapon that used mechanical chains and gears to fire multiple projectiles in rapid succession.

Researchers describe the machine gun-like weapon—and explain how it may have been used at Pompeii—in a new paper published in the journal Heritage.

Pompeii was famously preserved in ash after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. But it had a long—and, at times, tumultuous—pre-eruption history, too. Archaeologists have discovered traces of Pompeii’s past on the city’s northern walls, which are dotted with battle scars from Sulla’s army.

His troops used catapults called scorpions and large, crossbow-like weapons called ballistae to launch projectiles at the city, which left large, round holes in the walls. Nearby, however, researchers have also discovered other indentations that don’t look like they were made by ballistae. These mysterious four-sided cavities appear at regular, closely spaced intervals in a fan-shaped pattern; most of the time, they’re just a few inches deep.

Adriana Rossi, Silvia Bertacchi and Veronica Casadei used a variety of methods to analyze the clusters of divots, including high-resolution laser scanning, detailed imaging analysis and 3D modeling. From there, they worked backward and deduce the size, shape and force of the weapon that made the marks. They suspect the holes were made by metal-tipped projectiles fired in quick succession by a repeating weapon—the polybolos.

Archaeologists have never discovered examples of the polybolos. But they’ve read about it in historic texts, including detailed descriptions provided by the engineer Philo of Byzantium in the third century B.C.E., who attributed its invention to the Greek engineer Dionysius of Alexandria in Rhodes.

Flash forward to 96 B.C.E. That’s when Sulla served as governor of Cilicia, the province where Rhodes is located. For the researchers, this coincidence is too big to ignore.

“It is therefore plausible that Sulla—a politically astute and technically informed commander—could have acquired or encouraged Rhodian innovations, deploying an enhanced multi-shot engine during the siege of Pompeii,” the researchers write in the paper.

Researchers think Sulla’s troops may have used the rapid-fire capabilities of the polybolos to hit Pompeiian defenders as they moved from place to place or briefly exposed themselves to return fire. At least some of the time, however, the Roman soldiers missed their intended targets, and the projectiles ended up hitting the walls instead.

For now, the idea that Sulla’s troops used a polybolos to quell the Pompeii rebellion is just a theory. But based on the available evidence, the researchers think it’s a pretty good one.

“Although no physical remains of the weapon have been found, the formal and functional compatibility between the damage observed along the northern stretch of Pompeii’s city walls and ancient textual descriptions provides inferential support for the hypothesis,” they write in the paper. “The temporal coincidence between the military operations preceding Sulla’s siege of Pompeii in 89 B.C.E. and the history of Rhodes adds contextual plausibility to the proposed scenario.”

The ruins of Pompeii were discovered in the 16th century, though systematic excavations didn’t begin until 1738. Archaeologists were fascinated by the ancient city that had been frozen in time at the moment disaster struck.

Today, researchers are still unraveling the mysteries of how the devastating eruption played out. At the same time, they’ve also been asking new questions about the city’s history in the years before 79 C.E.

“We are interested in the development of the city,” Steven Ellis, a classicist at the University of Cincinnati and the co-director of the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia, told National Geographic’s James Owens in 2021. “What was there first and how did it get to the point it was when it was destroyed?”

Sarah Kuta | Read More

Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.