The machine gun is a weapon that we would think of as being undoubtedly modern. However, there was an ancient Greek version called the polybolos, for which we have a technical specification in the artillery manual of Philon, late in the third century BC. Invented in the arsenal at Rhodes by Dionysius of Alexandria, it was a magazine-fed bolt-shooter, which could fire repeatedly. It was regulated by a chain drive that ran over rotating sprockets. This drew back the bowstring, which was in turn powered by a rotary feeder, then pressed the trigger at exactly the right moment. It was loaded with bolts, which it could fire at a remarkable speed.
Ancient military artillery, all variations of catapults, c. third century BC.
We have a fairly clear idea of how effective the polybolos could have been. A German military engineer (whose name was Schramm) constructed a working model for Kaiser Wilhelm in the late nineteenth century. He used a bicycle chain to recreate the original contraption. Curiously, the polybolos was criticized at this time for its accuracy – one contemporary writer commented that the lack of variation in where the bolts landed meant that it concentrated fire too heavily on one target. Schramm’s model was extremely accurate. The second bolt he fired actually split the first one that had landed in the target ahead in half, making him something of a Teutonic Robin Hood.