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03-13-2001, 03:54 AM

What type of artillery did they actually use? Did they just use catipults filled with rocks, burning wood, etc? One thing that really bothers me that some of you can hopefully clear up... did the Romans use Greek fire? Oh, almost forgot, did they use more than catipults (ex. Ballistas battering rams)? Thnx all for the info. Romulus Agustulus, Caeser of Rome and president of UPURS <marquee>Veni, Vedi, Veci: I came, I saw, I conquered</marquee> My homepage

03-13-2001, 08:02 AM

Salve, 
 
Artillery consisted mainly of socalled torsion guns. There were several types of torsion guns in use. A torsion gun is a type of catapult in the arm(s) is/are placed in twisted strands of sinew, hair or comparable material. Most types used by the Roman army had two arms and resembled a large crossbow in general form (though not in concept, the energy used to propel the missile being stored in the strands of sinew rather than the arms themselves). Later single arm catapults came in use that were of a more simple type of construction. The latter was primarily used to shoot stones, while the former type could fire both stones and bolts. 
 
There were a lot of different names in use for catapults (among others catapulta (from Greek katapeltes: shield piercer); ballista, tormentum, cheiroballistra), and it seems that these do not fit into an altogether coherent vocabulary. This means that the same word can mean different things when employed by different authors. Terminology also shifted with passage of time. An example is the term scorpio or scorpion. In the late republic this term was applied to two armed light bolt shooters, while it was used in the fourth century as the name for single armed catapults. One should consider the terminology in context rather than apply a modern set of terms in a technical sense that they lacked in antiquity. 
 
For good illustrations and texts it is best to consult the books by Peter Connolly, especially Greece and Rome at war. More specialised books on artillery are: 
 
Baatz, D., Bauten und Katpulte des rÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â¶mischen Heeres (Stuttgart, 1994), MAVORS 11. 
Marsden, E.W., Greek and Roman artillery: historical development (Oxford 1999) 232p. 
Marsden, E.W., Greek and Roman artillery: technical treatises (Oxford 1999) 277p. 
 
 
Incendiary weapons were used mainly in naval combat and sieges. Wooden structures like palissades and ships were better targets to engage with fire than humans and horses. Napalm bombardments in set piece battles like the opening scene in Gladiator have more to do with Hollywood than history: whether there are VC or Marcomannic warriors in the tree line does not bother film makers as long as there are nice gasoline explosions. Special arrow heads that could hold combustible material have been found and there are descriptions of containers with combustible materials. The real Greek fire and its associated siphon flame thrower was a weapon of Byzantine (or Very Late Imperial East Roman if you like) times, though incendiary mixtures had been known before without such a delivery system. The term itself is not the one used by the Byzantines themselves and was used in medieval texts for all kinds of incendiary weaponry. 
 
For incendiary weapons in antiquity read: 
 
Kiechle, F.K., 'Die Entwicklung der Brandwaffen im Altertum' in: Historia 26 (1977), 253-256. 
 
The siege armoury consisted of more than just artillery. There were also mobile and static battering rams, drills, siege towers equipped with artillery, rams and assault bridges, covered assault ladders, movable sheds and grappling hooks for picking up individuals and introducing them to unmotored wingless flight. 
 
A nice overview of such siege engines is found in the books of Connolly and in Warry's Warfare in the classical world 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

03-13-2001, 11:25 AM

Salve, 
 
Here are some web links that may be useful: 
 
A page by D. Baatz, an expert on ancient artillery: 
 
home.t-online.de/home/d.b...tapult.htm 
 
A general overview: 
 
www.nzp.com/0600roman.html 
 
A reenactment site with lots of info on catapults and siege engines. Also has many of the Connolly drawings: 
 
www.stormthewalls.dhs.org.../Roman.htm 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

Goffredo · 03-14-2001, 01:49 PM

There is an old SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article that reviewed some studies on Greek-Roman artillery reconstructions. If anyone is interested I can get the full reference. I recently saw a reprint of it in Italian and with a small effort I can go to a book store and dig it out. I read it about 20 years ago and I remember being impressed by a catapult driven by a bicycle-like chain hand driven mechanism (reinvented by Leonardo) that would cyclically @#%$, load and fire a bolt (the bolts fell into position from a magazine shaped like a funnel). The article claimed that the precision was so high that to avoid shooting at the same spot (like splitting a previously shot arrow!) one had move the catapult. I always wondered if there is evidence of such device being truly used in battle. Or was it a curiosity or unpractical prototype of some Archemedes-like genius far in advance of his times. Maybe it was just to bulky to use. 
 
P.S. Indeed, to point out that scorpions and bolt firing catapults could be so precise, the author recounts Caesar's account of a seige in which courageous Gauls would continue to man a key position on the bastions of the city inspite of the fact that a scorpion kept the position under fire and every Gaul that took the position was killed.

Goffredo · 03-14-2001, 01:51 PM

There is an old SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN article that reviewed some studies on Greek-Roman artillery reconstructions. If anyone is interested I can get the full reference. I recently saw a reprint of it in Italian and with a small effort I can go to a book store and dig it out. I read it about 20 years ago and I remember being impressed by a catapult driven by a bicycle-like chain hand driven mechanism (reinvented by Leonardo) that would cyclically load and fire a bolt (the bolts fell into position from a magazine shaped like a funnel). The article claimed that the precision was so high that to avoid shooting at the same spot (like splitting a previously shot arrow!) one had move the catapult. I always wondered if there is evidence of such device being truly used in battle. Or was it a curiosity or unpractical prototype of some Archemedes-like genius far in advance of his times. Maybe it was just to bulky to use. 
 
P.S. Indeed, to point out that scorpions and bolt firing catapults could be so precise, the author recounts Caesar's account of a seige in which courageous Gauls would continue to man a key position on the bastions of the city inspite of the fact that a scorpion kept the position under fire and every Gaul that took the position was killed.

Goffredo · 03-14-2001, 01:58 PM

Sorry about making a second entry. I wanted to edit the first one where quite innocently I used a 4-letter work which means to prepare a firing mechanism, but it is also widely used in inconvenient literature. That word belongs to the nasty-word list and was scrambled. I pushed the reply instead of edit button and hence two entries. Sorry. 
 
P.S. At this point I am curious to know if gun builders have deleted that word from their vocabulary too. I understand that one should protect sensitive eyes and ears but I did chuckled when this censoring happened to me. I assumed we were all adults. ciao Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub45.ezboard.com/ugoffredo.showPublicProfile?language=EN>goffredo</A> at: 3/14/01 3:04:36 pm

03-14-2001, 03:50 PM

Salve, 
 
If you can provide the full article reference, I am certainly interested. It strikes me as strange that the accuracy of the repeating catapult would be so high given the stress on the machine and the violent force behind a release of the string. Was the statement based on actual experiments made with a reconstruction of the weapon? Though perhaps not directly relevant to the Mediterranean ancient world I have read that the Chinese repeating crossbows suffered from decreased accuracy because of their use of flightless bolts compared to ordinary models. 
 
Regards, 
 
Sander van Dorst

Goffredo · 03-15-2001, 07:32 AM

Yes, of course. In a few days (monday) I'll give the full reference, ust as soon as I have the chance to go to the book store where I saw the reprint. Ciao for now

Goffredo · 03-15-2001, 07:50 AM

Me again. Just before loging off I thought of looking on the web. Indeed I used my favorite search engine, google, and entered "repeating catapult". I clicked on the very first site and there is the repeater. Made by Dionysius of Alexandria, apparently it didn't shoot very far. It will give you something to read while I get the reference I promised. 
ciao for now, my students are waiting

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