07-15-2008, 09:14 AM
You may want to rethink your artillery a bit. Duncan Campbell's Osprey book is an excellent resource. I highly reccommend it. Here are, IMHO, the issues that could use correction.
Scorpio Class ballista.... Throughout the Republic and Early Principate the Scorpio, being a two-armed torsion arrow shooter would be considered a catapult. Later in the Empire the term came to mean the single-armed torsion stone slinger often called the onager. The term ballista was applied to very large double-armed stone throwers at least until @ 100 AD when it also included a new type of arrow shooter with a widely spaced arched iron frame. The large stone throwing ballista seems to have been eventually phased out in favor of the onager.
Trebuchetthis weapon is not known to have existed in Roman times in either traction or counterweight forms. Roman engines were virtually all torsion powered.
Onager This single vertical armed stone thrower is what most people think of when one says catapult. From the screen shots there appear to be two construction errors. First, there is no eveidence that wheels were ever attached to them. Second, the projectile was palced in a sling similar to those found on the trebuchet. Using a scoop or spoon shape on the arm would make it a mangonel, another later development.
Scorpio Class ballista.... Throughout the Republic and Early Principate the Scorpio, being a two-armed torsion arrow shooter would be considered a catapult. Later in the Empire the term came to mean the single-armed torsion stone slinger often called the onager. The term ballista was applied to very large double-armed stone throwers at least until @ 100 AD when it also included a new type of arrow shooter with a widely spaced arched iron frame. The large stone throwing ballista seems to have been eventually phased out in favor of the onager.
Trebuchetthis weapon is not known to have existed in Roman times in either traction or counterweight forms. Roman engines were virtually all torsion powered.
Onager This single vertical armed stone thrower is what most people think of when one says catapult. From the screen shots there appear to be two construction errors. First, there is no eveidence that wheels were ever attached to them. Second, the projectile was palced in a sling similar to those found on the trebuchet. Using a scoop or spoon shape on the arm would make it a mangonel, another later development.
P. Clodius Secundus (Randi Richert), Legio III Cyrenaica
"Caesar\'s Conquerors"
"Caesar\'s Conquerors"
