Why Julius Caesar Would Have Been the World’s Best Drone Designer

You may have noticed a trend. We like writing articles where we draw ridiculous comparisons to things that are typically not associated with drones. Things like toilets, the Ford Model T, and bacon. And we like making outlandish references to the ancient Romans to support shameless promotions of the Modovolo Lift: “What the Fall of the Roman Republic, the Cost of Death, and Drone Operators have in common” and our personal favorite “Why the ancient Romans had better drones than we do.”

This is partly to prove to you we aren’t using AI to write these articles. (But we all know that the real reason is that these titles have a high level of click-bait-ness.) 

And this article is no exception. You’re welcome. 

So let’s talk about Julius Caesar (and, eventually, drones). Caesar is a man who conjures up a whole host of popular culture references, but mostly he’s remembered through early Hollywood movies about his days lounging about and soaking up the Egyptian sun with Cleopatra. And, well, getting stabbed in the back a few times. But let’s not argue about who killed whom.   

It’s an odd legacy especially since, unbeknownst to most people, Julius Caesar was and will probably always be the most winning general ever in all of human history. The guy kicked ass and took names at an astonishing scale: winning over 30 major battles, conquering most of Western Europe, enslaving millions of people across what is now modern-day France, Spain, and Turkey  (and, yes, enslavement was a key metric of success back in ancient times), sacking hundreds of towns and cities, and just generally being a nuisance to anything that stood in his way. 

You ask: what’s a good example of this nuisance-making? The answer most history dorks will give is: The Siege (and sacking) of Avaricum. And your author is not about to challenge that. 

First, some background prior to Avaricum. Over a 5-year period Julius Caesar slowly but surely conquered most of the large tribes spread across what was then called “Gaul” (and what today is modern France and Belgium). But after 5 years of getting their asses kicked, the Gauls then had the bright idea to revolt (again) and one of their key strategies was a three-step process: (1) to store all of their food in large fortresses with tall and wide stone walls, (2) to burn all of their fields and villages to the ground, and then, because of the lack of food, and (3) to starve the invading Romans into submission. 

Avaricum was one of those large fortresses. You can see an awesome example model above (that a very dorky person from West Point built about 20 years ago) and in the background of that model there is a very tall and wide stone wall protecting Avaricum. 

Gauls were quite confident that they were safe - and not only because of those tall and wide stone walls. The Romans had no food and were living off of bread made from ground-up tree root. There was a marsh on all sides of Avaricum with only one small road leading out. And there was a Gallic army on the other end of that one small road. The net/net here is: (1) the Romans were trapped and (2) the Romans had no food (except the really nasty tree-root bread).  

If it had been anyone but Caesar, more likely than not the Gauls would have succeeded. Yet Caesar was more than a general. He was a designer. He saw the world in terms of not only what existed but what could exist. And he understood how to think in first principles, i.e., boiling the problem down to its core components. 

That’s why Caesar’s siege of Avaricum is at a level that is profoundly and insanely beyond anything the ancient world had seen - and indeed beyond anything today.

You see, back then no one had ever thought to attack a city like Avaricum. If you saw a city surrounded by tall and wide stone walls built on a rocky outcrop, you’d either sulk (and go home) or you’d try to blockade the city for a year (and starve them out). Those were your options. So no Gaul would have thought that there was another solution. And it was just inconceivable that anyone could scale those walls because the Gauls figured no siege engine could ever reach it. Plus recall that this is in the days before artillery so there was nothing that could physically destroy the walls. You had to go up and over. 

But that’s just what Caesar did. So let’s break down why Avaricum is such a momental design — and then how this all relates to drones.  

Causeways. There are two immense causeways in parallel. Why causeways? Why two in parallel? Good questions. 

Caesar wasn’t the first to use a siege tower but, as you can see in the model above, Avaricum was built on a rocky outcrop with a rather sizable natural ditch at the bottom. So two problems: (1) there was no way to roll a standard siege tower to the tall and wide stone walls; and (2) even if you did manage to roll them down there, they would never reach the top. Wooden siege towers had a natural structural limit of about 4 stories. So Caesar designed the causeways which solved both problems. 

But these weren’t ordinary causeways. For starters, each causeway was an immense lattice work of “Lincoln Logs” covered in pitch and filled completely with dirt. This made it nearly impossible for the Avaricum defenders to light it on fire. 

Siege Tower Mobility. But more importantly the Causeways were perfectly flat with a paved surface, very similar to a road, something which the Romans were incredibly good at building. This was an important design detail. You see, in order for siege towers to work, you need to be able to launch thousands of men as quickly as possible to overwhelm the defenders. And that means massively large siege towers. But massively large siege towers are heavy and hard to move, even when you have thousands of soldiers at hand to push them. The paved surface of the causeways meant that Caesar could have the largest siege towers possible and he could (relatively) easily move them into position. Fast. 

Parallel Design and the Fixed Siege Tower. What about the parallel design?  Well, there are two obvious benefits: (i) parallel design split the defenders and (ii) Caesar could dump more men, more quickly onto the parapet. 

Plus there was a key design innovation -  the “fixed siege tower” in the middle between the two parallel causeways giving an additional way to dump more men onto the parapet. 

As an aside, the fixed siege tower must have been the least-favorite thing of the line soldiers to build. It was right up against Avaricum’s wall so the soldiers had defenders dropping things on them the whole time while they were trying to build. Molten lead. Feces. Rocks. While they were lugging logs into place. And while chopping the corners of the logs so they fit together. And while shoveling dirt into the cavity between the logs. Just brutal. 

The solution was to raise each level and keep the shed over the heads of the builders all at the same time, something which was not easily done.

What was the result? The parallel causeways and the fixed siege tower ended up being a combined type of psychological warfare. Recall that the Romans were trapped and the Gauls believed that Avaricum was invincible. But then as the Romans persisted in construction over the course of just a few weeks (which was just insanely fast), it must have dawned on the Gauls at some point that they were going to lose and lose badly. And lose quickly given the fast pace of construction.  

So while at first the Gauls put up a spirited defense, as the scope and speed at which the siege works became a reality, the Gauls became less and less engaged in defense. 

Then one night there was an intense storm with lightning and heavy rain. Caesar had his men push the mobile siege towers into place. The leading soldiers were standing ready on the stairs and platforms of the mobile siege towers with a massive queue lined up behind them. 

Everything was ready. Then the massive gates of the mobile siege towers dropped to form a bridge to Avaricum’s parapets and…no one was there. The Gauls had left the entire wall undefended. 

So the Romans crossed over to the parapets, causally made their way down into the main streets of the city, and started to deploy in formations, all of which happened before the alarm was finally sounded.

The Gauls poured into the streets in a last fanatic and undisciplined frenzy of fighting, mostly small groups of fighters flailing against the Roman shield wall. Some Gauls did manage to finally string together an ad hoc battle line, but it was too little too late. Even in the best of scenarios the Gauls struggled against the mighty Roman legions and in the streets of Avaricum in the middle of night with rain pelting them the disorganized Gauls perished to the man. 

And, ironically, the fixed siege tower was never used. 

Caesar as Drone Designer. OK. Let’s talk about drones (finally) and why Caesar would be good at designing drones.  

It’s all about First Principles thinking. And First Principles thinking requires a deep understanding the “core problem” intimately.  

For Avaricum Caesar understood the core problem as this: how to get as many men as possible, as quickly as possible over the parapet - all before they ran out of food. Note that the core problem could have been framed differently, e.g., “How do I get my men out of this situation?” and “How do I starve Avaricum into submission?” But those “framings” speak of conventional thinking on how to optimize or persist in existing solutions. And Caesar’s solution at Avaricum was anything but conventional. 

What’s the core problem with drones? You could view the problem as: “How do I get more flight time from my existing drone?” This might mean a bigger battery or a different motor. But this would be conventional thinking to optimize an existing solution.  

We believe Caesar would have seen the core problem differently.  A drone is just an energy source and propulsion. That’s all a drone is. So the core problem Caesar would ask is: “how do you maximize the propulsion and energy source and eliminate or minimize everything else?”  

Well, we hear you say: “That’s just shamelessly self-promoting the Modovolo Lift.” And, yes, that’s right. We engineered everything in the Lift to have the least amount of everything that wasn’t needed. There is no fixed center or fixed arms or fixed number of propellers. Every piece of every Lift Pod has a purpose dedicated to propulsion and minimizing the amount and weight of the energy sources. 

And we hear you ask: “Are you comparing yourselves to Caesar?” No, that would be the height of hubris. 

“Vici, Vidi, Vici.”