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The scorpio or scorpion was a type of Roman torsion siege engine and field artillery piece. It was described in detail by the early-imperial Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius [1] in the 1st century BC and by the 4th century AD officer and historian Ammianus Marcellinus. [2]
Two versions are known: a horizontal two-armed variety like a ballista and a one-armed, vertical version otherwise referred to as an onager. The scorpion was made of a ground frame made of two beams joined together with crossbeams. Spring holes were drilled into the sides of the beams to allow for ropes to be placed in, thus allowing them to serve as sinew-springs. This gave the weapon more power. An arm made of wood known as the stilus, with iron hooks at the end, was used to hold the stone or bolt which was to be fired. [3] The fourth century army officer and historian Ammianus Marcellinus witnessed the use of scorpiones during several engagements in the Persian wars of Constantius II, and described the one-armed version as synonymous with the onager, with the vertical upraised arm as the 'scorpion's sting'. [2] The complexity of construction and in particular the torsion springs (which the Romans referred to as tormenta) led to great sensitivity to any variation in temperature or moisture, which limited their use. While this type of technology continued to be used in the Byzantine Empire, which was the continuation of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages, it had disappeared in the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Unlike the onager, the scorpion only required one man to operate it. [4]
In 52 BC, during the siege of Avaricum in the war against the Gauls, Julius Caesar mentions the scorpio in use as an anti-personnel weapon against the Gallic town's defenders. [5] [6] The late third or early fifth century Roman author Vegetius described weapons like the scorpion mounted on carts for campaign use. According to Vegetius, the Roman Empire ideally fielded fifty-five carroballistae per legion, one for every century, of whom ten men would be deputed to operate the machine. These, which match Vitruvius's description and the depictions on Trajan's Column and the Column of Marcus Aurelius, he describes as mule-drawn, armour-piercing ballistae which "are to be used not only for defending the camp, but also in the field". [7] The carroballista could be synonymous with, or very similar to, the scorpio mounted (and not merely transported) on a cart.
The bolt-firing scorpio had mainly two functions in a legion. In precision shooting, it was a weapon of marksmanship capable of cutting down any foe within a distance of 100 m (330 ft). In parabolic shooting, the range is greater, with distances up to 400 m (1,300 ft), and the firing rate is higher (3 to 4 shots per minute). With precision shooting the rate of fire was significantly less. Scorpions could be used in an artillery battery at the top of a hill or other high ground, the side of which was protected by the main body of the legion. The weight and speed of a bolt was sufficient to pierce enemy shields, usually also wounding the enemy so struck.
Like other ancient artillery, the scorpion could be cumbersome and costly campaign equipment, as it could be quite difficult to move quickly and usually acted as a fixed weapon used in infantry defense and for sieges, [8] where it was used both as a siege weapon, fired by the besiegers from earthworks and siege towers, and as an element in cities' defences, mounted on walls and towers.
A further development of torsion siege engines scorpio was the cheiroballista . [9]
A crossbow is a ranged weapon using an elastic launching device consisting of a bow-like assembly called a prod, mounted horizontally on a main frame called a tiller, which is hand-held in a similar fashion to the stock of a long gun. Crossbows shoot arrow-like projectiles called bolts or quarrels. A person who shoots crossbow is called a crossbowman or an arbalist.
A catapult is a ballistic device used to launch a projectile a great distance without the aid of gunpowder or other propellants – particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines. A catapult uses the sudden release of stored potential energy to propel its payload. Most convert tension or torsion energy that was more slowly and manually built up within the device before release, via springs, bows, twisted rope, elastic, or any of numerous other materials and mechanisms.
Vitruvius was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work titled De architectura. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture. It is not clear to what extent his contemporaries regarded his book as original or important.
The ballista, plural ballistae, sometimes called bolt thrower, was an ancient missile weapon that launched either bolts or stones at a distant target.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ancient Rome:
The mangonel, also called the traction trebuchet, was a type of trebuchet used in Ancient China starting from the Warring States period, and later across Eurasia by the 6th century AD. Unlike the later counterweight trebuchet, the mangonel operated on manpower-pulling cords attached to a lever and sling to launch projectiles.
A siege engine is a device that is designed to break or circumvent heavy castle doors, thick city walls and other fortifications in siege warfare. Some are immobile, constructed in place to attack enemy fortifications from a distance, while others have wheels to enable advancing up to the enemy fortification. There are many distinct types, such as siege towers that allow foot soldiers to scale walls and attack the defenders, battering rams that damage walls or gates, and large ranged weapons that attack from a distance by launching projectiles. Some complex siege engines were combinations of these types.
A cohort was a standard tactical military unit of a Roman legion. Although the standard size changed with time and situation, it was generally composed of 480 soldiers. A cohort is considered to be the equivalent of a modern military battalion. The cohort replaced the maniple. From the late second century BC and until the middle of the third century AD, ten cohorts made up a legion. Cohorts were named "first cohort,” "second cohort," etc. The first cohort consisted of experienced legionaries, while the legionaries in the tenth cohort were less experienced.
The onager was a Roman torsion powered siege engine. It is commonly depicted as a catapult with a bowl, bucket, or sling at the end of its throwing arm. The onager was first mentioned in 353 AD by Ammianus Marcellinus, who described onagers as the same as a scorpion. The onager is often confused with the later mangonel, a "traction trebuchet" that replaced torsion powered siege engines in the 6th century AD.
Roman siege engines were, for the most part, adapted from Hellenistic siege technology. Relatively small efforts were made to develop the technology; however, the Romans brought an unrelentingly aggressive style to siege warfare that brought them repeated success. Up to the first century BC, the Romans utilized siege weapons only as required and relied for the most part on ladders, towers and rams to assault a fortified town. Ballistae were also employed, but held no permanent place within a legion's roster, until later in the republic, and were used sparingly. Julius Caesar took great interest in the integration of advanced siege engines, organizing their use for optimal battlefield efficiency.
Marcus Julius Cottius was King of the Celtic and Ligurian inhabitants of the mountainous Roman province then known as Alpes Taurinae and now as the Cottian Alps early in the 1st century BC. Son and successor to King Donnus, he negotiated a dependent status with Emperor Augustus that preserved considerable autonomy for his country, making him a Roman governor, and adopted Roman citizenship.
The siege of Amida was a military investment of the Roman fortified frontier city of Amida by the Sasanian Empire. It took place in AD 359 when the Sasanian army under king Shapur II invaded the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. Shapur wanted to exploit the absence of the Roman Emperor Constantius II who was overseeing affairs in the western part of the Empire. The city fell, but the strategic gain was little.
A lithobolos refers to any mechanical artillery weapon used and/or referred to as a stone thrower in ancient warfare. Typically this referred to engines that propel a stone along a flat track with two rigid bow arms powered by torsion, in particular all sizes of palintonon.
Roman military personal equipment was produced in large numbers to established patterns, and used in an established manner. These standard patterns and uses were called the res militaris or disciplina. Its regular practice during the Roman Republic and Roman Empire led to military excellence and victory. The equipment gave the Romans a very distinct advantage over their barbarian enemies, especially so in the case of armour. This does not mean that every Roman soldier had better equipment than the richer men among his opponents. Roman equipment was not of a better quality than that used by the majority of Rome's adversaries. Other historians and writers have stated that the Roman army's need for large quantities of "mass produced" equipment after the so-called "Marian Reforms" and subsequent civil wars led to a decline in the quality of Roman equipment compared to the earlier Republican era:
The production of these kinds of helmets of Italic tradition decreased in quality because of the demands of equipping huge armies, especially during civil wars...The bad quality of these helmets is recorded by the sources describing how sometimes they were covered by wicker protections, like those of Pompeius' soldiers during the siege of Dyrrachium in 48 BC, which were seriously damaged by the missiles of Caesar's slingers and archers.
It would appear that armour quality suffered at times when mass production methods were being used to meet the increased demand which was very high the reduced size cuirasses would also have been quicker and cheaper to produce, which may have been a deciding factor at times of financial crisis, or where large bodies of men were required to be mobilized at short notice, possibly reflected in the poor-quality, mass produced iron helmets of Imperial Italic type C, as found, for example, in the River Po at Cremona, associated with the Civil Wars of AD 69 AD; Russell Robinson, 1975, 67
Up until then, the quality of helmets had been fairly consistent and the bowls well decorated and finished. However, after the Marian Reforms, with their resultant influx of the poorest citizens into the army, there must inevitably have been a massive demand for cheaper equipment, a situation which can only have been exacerbated by the Civil Wars...
It is not clear where and when the crossbow originated, but it is believed to have appeared in China and Europe around the 7th to 5th centuries BC. In China the crossbow was one of the primary military weapons from the Warring States period until the end of the Han dynasty, when armies composed of up to 30 to 50 per cent crossbowmen were not unheard of. The crossbow lost much of its popularity after the fall of the Han dynasty, likely due to the rise of the more resilient heavy cavalry during the Six Dynasties. One Tang dynasty source recommends a bow to crossbow ratio of five to one as well as the utilization of the countermarch to make up for the crossbow's lack of speed. The crossbow countermarch technique was further refined in the Song dynasty, but crossbow usage in the military continued to decline after the Mongol conquest of China. Although the crossbow never regained the prominence it once had under the Han, it was never completely phased out either. Even as late as the 17th century, military theorists were still recommending it for wider military adoption, but production had already shifted in favour of firearms and traditional composite bows.
A torsion siege engine is a type of siege engine that utilizes torsion to launch projectiles. They were initially developed by the ancient Macedonians, specifically Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great, and used through the Middle Ages until the development of gunpowder artillery in the 14th century rendered them mostly obsolete.
The sambuca was a ship-borne siege engine which was invented by Heracleides of Tarentum and was first used unsuccessfully by Marcus Claudius Marcellus during the Roman siege of Syracuse in 213 BC.
Roman infantry tactics are the theoretical and historical deployment, formation, and manoeuvres of the Roman infantry from the start of the Roman Republic to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The focus below is primarily on Roman tactics: the "how" of their approach to battle, and how it stacked up against a variety of opponents over time. It does not attempt detailed coverage of things like army structure or equipment. Various battles are summarized to illustrate Roman methods with links to detailed articles on individual encounters.
The Greeks and Romans both made extensive use of artillery for shooting large arrows, bolts or spherical stones or metal balls. Occasionally they also used ranged early thermal weapons. There was heavy siege artillery, but more mobile and lighter field artillery was already known and used in pitched battles, especially in Roman imperial period.
The torsion mangonel myth, or simply the myth of the mangonel, is the belief that mangonels were torsion siege engines such as the ballista or onager which used the tension effect of twisted cords to shoot projectiles. Despite a significant body of research dating as far back as the 19th century pointing to the contrary, "it has not stopped the transmission of the myth to the present day." Evidence for the usage of torsion siege weapons, with the exception of the springald, exist only up until the 6th century, when they were superseded by the traction trebuchet, more commonly known as the mangonel.
Ancient mechanical artillery and hand-held missile weapons | ||
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| Generic terms |  | |
| Crew-served arrow-throwers | ||
| Crew-served stone-throwers | ||
| Hand-held weapons | ||