Alexander the Great's Mad Scientist

Tristan Hughes and Professor Edmund Richardson tell the story of Diades, Alexander's military engineer, and his role in the siege of Tyre in 332 BC — the causeway construction, the fire ships, the molten sand, and the engineering ingenuity that made an 'impossible' siege work. At over an hour, this is properly detailed siege warfare with a focus on the technical and tactical problems of reducing an island fortress. One of the better Ancients episodes in recent memory for anyone interested in pre-gunpowder siege craft.