12-08-2004, 04:06 PM
Turning to facts,<br>
I don't remember any crossbow on Orange's Arch (though I'd really love to be corrected at this point!)<br>
There are two fragments of second century AD funerary relieves from Gaul (Salignac-sur-Loire and Saint-Marcel) depicting crossbows. They are clearly hunting weapons and were probably just cocked by hand like the later Medieval simple crossbows were. The Salignac relief depicts clearly the nut.<br>
There is a Pictish stone depicting a hunter with a crossbow (Drosten stone, at St. Vigeans Museum) but it is dated about ninth century AD.<br>
Arcuballistae and manuballistae are quoted by Vegetius (late fourth century AD) not Ammianus. It can be reached from the meagre evidence that manuballistae were torsion weapons (cheiroballistra is the Greek translation of manuballista) and arcuballistae, crossbows (remember that in French they are still called ar©balete). Both were war weapons. Easter Roman (Bizantine) armies still used a weapon called 'solenarion' which seems to be a crossbow.<br>
The gastraphetes is described by Heron during the first century AD but it seems to have been invented at the beginning of fourth century BC. It was by no means a torsion weapon. Torsion was apparently discovered about fifty years later. The gastraphetes was a crossbow in the sense that it used a powerful composite reflex bow as its source of power but it was a catapult too (the forerunner of all catapults, indeed!) and it used a typical catapult shooting mechanism and stock.<br>
<br>
Aitor <p></p><i></i>
I don't remember any crossbow on Orange's Arch (though I'd really love to be corrected at this point!)<br>
There are two fragments of second century AD funerary relieves from Gaul (Salignac-sur-Loire and Saint-Marcel) depicting crossbows. They are clearly hunting weapons and were probably just cocked by hand like the later Medieval simple crossbows were. The Salignac relief depicts clearly the nut.<br>
There is a Pictish stone depicting a hunter with a crossbow (Drosten stone, at St. Vigeans Museum) but it is dated about ninth century AD.<br>
Arcuballistae and manuballistae are quoted by Vegetius (late fourth century AD) not Ammianus. It can be reached from the meagre evidence that manuballistae were torsion weapons (cheiroballistra is the Greek translation of manuballista) and arcuballistae, crossbows (remember that in French they are still called ar©balete). Both were war weapons. Easter Roman (Bizantine) armies still used a weapon called 'solenarion' which seems to be a crossbow.<br>
The gastraphetes is described by Heron during the first century AD but it seems to have been invented at the beginning of fourth century BC. It was by no means a torsion weapon. Torsion was apparently discovered about fifty years later. The gastraphetes was a crossbow in the sense that it used a powerful composite reflex bow as its source of power but it was a catapult too (the forerunner of all catapults, indeed!) and it used a typical catapult shooting mechanism and stock.<br>
<br>
Aitor <p></p><i></i>
It\'s all an accident, an accident of hands. Mine, others, all without mind, from one extreme to another, but neither works nor will ever.
Rolf Steiner
Rolf Steiner
