stimuli

[Quintus Aurelius Lepidus]

Hi

I've found a drawing of these stimuli of which caesar was talking;

Does someone know about the size of these iron tips? i would like to order some with an artisan.

[attachment=10619]stimuli.jpg[/attachment]

[Vindex]

The quickest way to find out the dimensions of the artefacts is if you can discover which site they were recovered from. They are clearly illustrations of finds from somewhere, and most iron artefacts are illustrated in archaeological reports.

[Gunthamund Hasding]

Hi I suppose you speak about the "spurs" at Alesia from Caesar BG VII 73
see the text here:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...r/7F*.html

"In front of all these, logs a foot long, with iron hooks firmly attached, were buried altogether in the ground and scattered at brief intervals all over the field, and these they called "spurs."

he does not say how big those were but as the logs in which they were fixed are 1 foot (0.971 ft or 296 mm) I suppose about 10 cm (4 in) above the log would be appropriate. You will have to take care about sinking those into the logs so I would go with a length of about 12 cm from which 3-4 sunk.

He also states 1 chapter before: "and the remainder of the pit was covered over with twigs and brushwood to conceal the trap" he wanted to conceal the traps so probably they weren't too large

And another thing don't make them to look all the same is nicer to have them different after all romans didn't care about standardization as we are doing it today

hope it helps you with ordering

cheers

[Robert]

TOTALY nasty buggers! Hmm, these look fun to forge. Looks like half a plumbata point with that barb jutting out. These were also made from bits and pieces of scrap iron. Good point about just banging them out, utalitarian is the key word in this sort of items.

[Renatus]

I've found a drawing of these stimuli of which caesar was talking;

Does someone know about the size of these iron tips? i would like to order some with an artisan.

I suppose you speak about the "spurs" at Alesia from Caesar BG VII 73
see the text here:
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Ro...r/7F*.html

"In front of all these, logs a foot long, with iron hooks firmly attached, were buried altogether in the ground and scattered at brief intervals all over the field, and these they called "spurs."

he does not say how big those were but as the logs in which they were fixed are 1 foot (0.971 ft or 296 mm) I suppose about 10 cm (4 in) above the log would be appropriate. You will have to take care about sinking those into the logs so I would go with a length of about 12 cm from which 3-4 sunk.

The illustration is by Peter Connolly and appears in his first book, The Roman Army, and in what he called his "big book", Greece and Rome at War. The caption says that the spike comes from Alesia, as Gunthamund suggests, and the text gives the length of the log as "about 30cm", so it should be possible to scale it up from the drawing.

[66kbm]

We have both of these in our group. Sizes unknown. When I can, may be a year from now as the season has virtualy ended, I will get some pics with size ref and re ignite this thread.
Its actually quite amazing that the kit our group has but one never thinks to take a pic of it as its always "there" on site.
Kevin