The sambuca was a ship-borne siege engine

Siege engine

A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some have been operated close to the fortifications, while others have been used to attack from a distance. From antiquity, siege engines were constructed largely of wood and...

 which was invented by Heraclides of Tarentum

Heraclides of Tarentum

Heraclides of Tarentum, , was a Greek physician of the Empiric school who wrote commentaries on the works of Hippocrates....

  and were first used unsuccessfully by Marcus Claudius Marcellus

Marcus Claudius Marcellus

Marcus Claudius Marcellus , five times elected as consul of the Roman Republic, was an important Roman military leader during the Gallic War of 225 BC and the Second Punic War...

 during the Roman siege of Syracuse  in 213 BC.

Polybius

Polybius

Polybius , Greek ) was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his work, The Histories, which covered the period of 220–146 BC in detail. The work describes in part the rise of the Roman Republic and its gradual domination over Greece...

 describes usage of the machine:

As well as these vessels he had eight quinquereme

Quinquereme

From the 4th century BC on, new types of oared warships appeared in the Mediterranean Sea, superseding the trireme and transforming naval warfare. Ships became increasingly bigger and heavier, including some of the largest wooden ships ever constructed...

s in pairs. Each pair had had their oars removed, one on the port and the other on the starboard side, and then these had been lashed together on the sides thus left bare. On these double vessels, rowed by the outer oars of each of the pair, they brought up under the walls some engines called “Sambucae,” the construction of which was as follows: A ladder was made four feet broad, and of a height to reach the top of the wall from the place where its foot had to rest; each side of the ladder was protected by a railing, and a covering or pent-house was added overhead. It was then placed so that its foot rested across the sides of the lashed-together vessels, which touched each other with its other extremity protruding a considerable way beyond the prows. On the tops of the masts pulleys were fixed with ropes: and when the engines were about to be used, men standing on the sterns of the vessels drew the ropes tied to the head of the ladder, while others standing on the prows assisted the raising of the machine and kept it steady with long poles. Having then brought the ships close in shore by using the outer oars of both vessels they tried to let the machine down upon the wall. At the head of the ladder was fixed a wooden stage secured on three sides by wicker-shields, upon which stood four men who fought and struggled with those who tried to prevent the sambuca from being made to rest on the battlements. But when they have fixed it and so got above the level of the top of the wall, the four men unfasten the wicker shields from either side of the stage, and walk out upon the battlements or towers as the case may be; they are followed by their comrades coming up by the sambuca, since the ladder’s foot is safely secured with ropes and stands upon both the ships. This construction has got the name “sambuca” or “harp” for the natural reason, that when it is raised the combination of the ship and ladder has very much the appearance of such an instrument.

They were used again unsuccessfully during the siege of Chios

Chios

Chios is the fifth largest of the Greek islands, situated in the Aegean Sea, seven kilometres off the Asia Minor coast. The island is separated from Turkey by the Chios Strait. The island is noted for its strong merchant shipping community, its unique mastic gum and its medieval villages...

. This may have been the siege conducted by Philip V in 201 BC, but neither source specified the date.

A different design of machine, also called a sambuca, was used unsuccessfully by Mithridates IV of Pontus

Mithridates IV of Pontus

Mithridates IV of Pontus or known by his full name Mithridates Philopator Philadelphus was a prince and sixth King of the Kingdom of Pontus....

 in his attack on Rhodes

Rhodes

Rhodes is an island in Greece, located in the eastern Aegean Sea. It is the largest of the Dodecanese islands in terms of both land area and population, with a population of 117,007, and also the island group's historical capital. Administratively the island forms a separate municipality within...

 in 88 B.C.

The engine was built upon two ships lashed together and consisted of towers between which an assault bridge was hoisted. Mithridates' sambuca had rams and projectiles as part of its offensive battery. During its deployment but before it could be successfully employed to transport soldiers, it fell. With it, fell the fortunes of the eastern wave against Rhodes, the Pontic king withdrawing.
Fifteen years later, Mithridates again used a siege engine, in his unsuccessful attack on Cyzicus

Cyzicus

Cyzicus was an ancient town of Mysia in Anatolia in the current Balıkesir Province of Turkey. It was located on the shoreward side of the present Kapıdağ Peninsula , a tombolo which is said to have originally been an island in the Sea of Marmara only to be connected to the mainland in historic...

. Later classical sources confuse the sambuca for a ship mounted siege tower. Vegetius used the term sambuca as the name given to the assault ramp mounted on a siege tower.

The name sambuca, is derived from an Egyptian harp which it was said to resemble.

In popular culture

The siege of Rhodes is recounted in a humorous fashion in The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough-Robinson, , is an internationally acclaimed Australian author.-Life:McCullough was born in Wellington, in outback central west New South Wales, in 1937 to James and Laurie McCullough. Her mother was a New Zealander of part-Māori descent. During her childhood, her family moved...

.