Need some information about Mantinea 207 BCE

[Paullus Scipio]

Duncan wrote:-

I wouldn't be so insulting as to call your version a "fairytale", Paul.

1. It's not "my" version, it's everyone's except yours.....
2.If you think it is not a 'fairytale', then post your evidence and reasoning, as I have suggested.( and I don't mean just the potential ambiguity....)
3. If you are offended by 'fairytale' then I gladly apologise...but I'm still waiting for an apology from you regarding your insulting jibe about not posting sources....especially as you needed me to point to them for you.

The fact is: I'm attempting to interpret a confusing passage with reasoned argument, while you're bombasting us with opinion masquerading as "fact".

What reasoned argument? Where is it? All you've done is suggest that the meaning of 'petroboloi' could mean human stone throwers...you haven't examined the context, or the circumstances, or anything else other than to heap scorn on any opinion bar your own, in an offensive manner, which you now compound by phrases such as "bombasting us with opinion"...when in fact I cite sources for all to see, and not selectively as you have done.

It would've been sufficient for you to explain why you think that Onomarchus died in battle, and I would've replied with Diodorus 16.35.5, where he clearly refers to "the fugitives, amongst whom was Onomarchus himself, cast off their armour and attempted to reach the [Athenian] triremes".

More distortion!( and I feel the temptation to use that english vernacular "B*******" word again! :wink: :wink: ) I didn't say he died in battle, I said he "didn't make it off the battlefield" because while all the sources agree he didn't survive the battle, there are several versions of how he died - drowned, killed by his own men, captured and executed.Your selective quote is misleading, because Diodorus goes on to say"Finally more than six thousand of the Phocians and mercenaries were slain, and among them the general himself".
Naughty Duncan, trying to mislead ! ...or did you simply not read it properly again? :roll:

Many long years, actually

...it was seven years (352-345) at the absolute maximum...I'd call it something like 3-5 years ( allowing some time to acquire an engineer, and recognising that his artillery train would have been complete long before it came to be the butt of Athenian jokes - a 'short time' rather than 'many long years'...but whatever, it is pretty good and swift going, starting from scratch... :wink: Philip learnt his lesson quickly, and was impressed enough to put remedies in hand immediately, or pretty close to it.

But never with stone-projecting catapults.

Whatever makes you think that? The fact that they are not specifically mentioned, presumably! But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...and you don't kill men behind battlements with arrow-shooters ( see quotes ante)

Do we judge a case by weight of numbers?! Novel approach!

... No, we judge by 'inherent military probability' and by 'balance of probabilities' and on both those counts, everyone except, apparently, you, thinks the 'stonethrowers' in question were machines! :lol: :lol:

Again, I'm unclear what relevance Charon's bow-machine has to the Onomarchus episode.

...you are being disingenuous again ! :roll: You know perfectly well, or should do, that Charon's stonethrower, while undated, is highly likely to be contemporaneous, on evolutionary grounds alone.

Zopyrus designed arrow-shooters. So, yet again, I'm unclear what relevance this has to the Onomarchus episode

...you are being disingenuous yet again, Duncan. :? ( )

I think we've had quite enough of your scorn and sarcasm, thanks

...to paraphrase John Paul Jones," I have not yet begun to be scornful or sarcastic"....I'm reserving that for when/if you lay out a case for 'hand-thrown' beyond the ancient (in Polyaenus' day) original meaning of the word.
And I must say, I take it ill that you deprecate Marsden so much, to whom all students of ancient artillery owe a debt, particularly you. :evil: