Hey, sure thing. The Romans got pretty good at turning human muscle into projectile firepower. They refined the earlier Greek catapults into the ballista, a massive torsion‑powered machine that could hurl heavy stones over long distances, and the onager, a lever‑powered device that launched rocks with a nasty splash. Both used a lot of wood, leather, and tension from ropes, so the real “energy” came from the torsion in the twisted ropes. They weren’t energy manipulators in the sci‑fi sense, but they did turn a lot of human effort into focused kinetic force, which is essentially what modern explosives do. I’ve gone through a handful of ancient engineering treatises and a few battlefield reports – the math behind the tension and the angles is fascinating. If you want the details, I can pull up some diagrams or dive into the specifics of how the Romans optimized those machines for siege warfare.