Roman drawings and pictures

[D B Campbell]

... if you take away the evidence of the Hatra catapult, which, as it is missing its stansions, can be interpreted in a number of ways ..., you are left with zero evidence for the existence of 'inswingers', despite the fact the some people in recent years have demonstrated that such an idea is potentially workable.

Well, you're right, inasmuch as the Hatra find is the key to the inswinging theory. If we only had the evidence of the iron kambestria (Gornea etc.), the theory probably would never have arisen. (I think I illustrated this in my [amazon]Greek and Roman Artillery 399 BC-AD 363[/amazon], where I've shown the iron-framed ballista as a traditional "outswinger" but the Hatra ballista as an inswinger.)

But, interestingly, in the section of Heron's Belopoeica, where he describes the palintone, there is the slight possibility that he is describing an inswinger, as earlier scholars had realised. I well remember leafing through an early compendium of Greek and Roman engineering and seeing the theory set out as fact. (Marsden doesn't even mention this, but you can read about it in Aitor Iriarte's defence of the inswinging theory in the Gladius journal -- don't have the ref to hand.)

Maybe if Wilkens and company decides to investigate inswingers, you'll be good to go? Catapult research doesnt begin and end with ESG as well, after all. I can only hope he does a better job than he did with that giant ballista that was aired on BBC.

To be fair to Alan Wilkins, the engineers disregarded his instructions in (at least) two key areas, so it's not surprising that the BBC ballista failed. But Alan and Len Morgan are in total control of their latest ballista, which should work a lot better.

The field-of-view theory suggested by Dr. Baatz hardly applies to a stone thrower which operates as an indirect firing weapon.

To be fair to Dietwulf Baatz, he was the first guy to realise that the Hatra find was a catapult at all. The Iraqi archaeologists thought that it was a battering-ram! :roll: I can well understand his reluctance to launch a completely new theory on the basis of one find. After all, we've had 30 years to think about it. But I've always been intrigued by the reconstruction drawing he published in Britannia 1978 -- if you look carefully, the arms appear to be inswinging, although Dietwulf has always denied that was his intention.

Also -- you have to understand that Dietwulf believes that all ancient catapults were used for reasonably short-range direct targetting -- and I agree with him. People tend to envisage a ballista working like a mortar, but the reason for a mortar's effectiveness is the fact that it's firing an explosive. It doesn't really matter if you're 6 feet short of your target when the projectile is designed to explode, creating a 6-foot crater. But if you're 6 feet short with a boulder, then you've missed! (You can see this style of stone-projector in my reconstruction of the stone-throwing ballista in [amazon]Greek and Roman Artillery 399 BC-AD 363[/amazon], where it has a low stand and a flat shooting angle.)

Interesting thread, chaps!