01-14-2009, 08:39 AM
In honor of RAT being back online, here is a taste of my latest project. It is another instance where I have tried to ignore current dogma and placed my faith in the original source (Trajan's Column again) to see where it led me.
Like my redesigns of the onager and carroballista base, it is a work-in-progress so please bear with me. Hopefully, someday I'll manage to get these written up as full articles. In the meantime, I look forward to your opinions and questions?
Many thanks to Vallus Itsvan, and Steve Peffley for their expertise and assistance.
The Dacian Reaper
On Trajan's Column in Rome there is a depiction of the preparations for the Roman assault on a hilltop fortress near the end of the Second Dacian War. (105-6 AD) In the upper right-hand corner of the scene, at the base of the Dacian fortifications are three roughly-triangular wheeled structures. Conventional wisdom, based on the work of Otto Lendle, suggests that these are the remains of Roman siege engines called ship's prow tortoises left over from a previous assault. It is my intent to dispel this notion and replace it with a more plausible explanation of their origin and function.
(Refer below to Figure #1 From Conrad Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule)
The ship's prow tortoise as first described by Apollodorus of Damascus in his text Poliorcetica (Siegecraft) was also triangular and could be mounted on wheels. According to his account it was designed to deflect wagons and barrels packed with logs that were rolled down at them by the defenders. Since Apollodorus was also the Chief Architect of the Column, it is easy to assume that these are the machines he described. Beyond having wheels and a superficial similarity of shape, there are a number of inconsistencies which contradict this conclusion;
The first incongruity is placement. If these were used as mobile walls to deflect logs and barrels rolled down upon the Romans, one would expect to find them in disarray somewhere in the no-man's land between the fort and the besieger's lines rather than lined up neatly in echelon at the top of the slope. Two of the three barrels shown appear to be resting at the foot of the wall.
The second is the structure of the machines. They have prominent triangular frames but there are no protective walls. If we are to believe, as suggested, that they are burned out hulks then we must then explain how they all burned in such a consistent manner and why the barrels next to them show no damage. Instead of defensive barriers these machines have a number of sharpened stakes and a hook or blade, all of which are facing down slope at the Romans. As a general rule, the offensive surfaces (i. e. sharp bits) of a weapon are most effective when pointed at the enemy.
The wheels are another significant feature. Their large diameter and placement at the outermost corners of the frame are more like those of an off-road vehicle than the iron bound rollers Apollodorus described. They would be ideal for careening at high speed down the hill, but superfluous if one were inching a heavy structure uphill in the face of enemy fire.
Having established that these are almost certainly not Roman tortoises, it is time to offer a theory of what they might have been and who made them. By default, credit for them goes to the besieged Dacians. This is supported by the fact that most Roman weapons had straight blades while the signature weapon of the Dacians was the two-handed falx, a hooked blade strikingly similar to the ones on these machines. The Latin word for scythe is falx. I began thinking of these weapons as Dacian Reapers, which brought to mind another obscure machine invented in Belgic Gaul.
Described in the mid first century by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History as a novel method of harvesting grain the vallus was designed to be pushed forwards through the standing grain shearing the heads off the crop leaving the straw in the field. The term vallus (a derivative of vallum or palisade) referred to the prominent row of forward-facing spikes which bunched up and stripped the stalks. Surviving images of the device showed that it bore a striking resemblance to the basic layout of these machines. They share an angular frame jutting rearwards from a transverse axle bearing a projecting row of “teeth”. It is easy to imagine some besieged farmer surrounded by serried ranks of the legions as numerous as summer wheat, looking to his experience for a way of mowing them down. This romantic bubble was nearly burst by the reality that the Mosel Valley where the vallus was invented is a long way from the Danube. The Romans, possessing an abundant supply of slaves had little need for such a labor saving device. They apparently did little to promote its use in other regions of the Empire. How then, could one establish a plausible means of transmission for this technology between domesticated Gaul and the Dacian hinterlands? Solving that riddle proved surprisingly easy.
Figure #2 The Gallic Reaper (Vallus) on a relief from Trier
The vallus was invented by the Treveri Tribe in the area around present day Arlon. They were described by Pomponius Mela as the “most enlightened of the Belgae”, and they prospered under Roman colonization until 70 AD when they joined the Batavian Rebellion. When the rebellion failed, a large number of their most prominent nobles fled east to live among their Germanic Allies. The importance of the harvester to their material culture is evidenced by the fact that a number of them had adopted the name Vallus. The dispersion of their descendants throughout the region is covered in greater detail in a manuscript being published by a fellow Roman Army Talk Forum Member Vallus Istvan, AKA “Treveri Gaul”. Finding people named after the machine you are investigating still thriving in the area after nearly two millennia makes it very plausible that they brought their technology and industrious nature along as well.
With a clearer view of the Dacian Reaper’s origin and purpose there are still several unanswered questions about it’s appearance and tactical deployment to consider. Taking the images from the column literally in the absence of other sources, it appears that the weapon’s timbers and wheels were arranged as an elongated right triangle rather than the symmetrical isosceles triangle one might expect. The asymmetry continued with the blade/hook/falx affixed to only one hub of the axle. The potential value of this lopsided contraption was not apparent until I tested a scale model built as faithfully as possible to the Trajanic frieze.
Figure #3 Photo reconstruction with the model in place of the middle weapon
When rolled rapidly into rows of obstacles (similar to advancing assault troops) the machine has a tendency to slew violently to the right. Imagine a person running full speed downhill and hooking a tree with their right arm. The trailing wheel then swings in a wide arc, striking the line to the left of the original point of impact. Turning sideways in this manner allows the machine to affect a wider swath of the target, instead of just punching through and continuing on downhill. If the impact fails to stop the device it continues on diagonally, striking subsequent ranks at a flanking angle.
Perhaps the hardest part of this project has been estimating the size of the actual machine. Using the size of the largest known falx blades as a guide yields a wheel height four to five feet and an overall length around twenty feet. This sets the height of the stakes and blade in the knee to groin area of opposing infantry. Too high to jump over, too massive to stop, and nothing but wheels or points to grab hold of. Facing such a weapon would be a daunting prospect. Finding willing participants for full-scale trials may prove difficult.
Figure #4 3D computer Model of the Dacian Reaper
This brings us back to Apollodorus and his reason for including these novelties on his tribute to Emperor Trajan. Much of the column is devoted to the glorious accomplishments of the Emperor and his men and the perils they faced. What better way highlight the hardships than to show some of the terrible tricks their foe employed? His Poliorcetica is believed to have been written years later. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that the ship’s prow tortoise was developed as a countermeasure in response to the incident depicted? The Romans never seem to have adopted the Dacian Reaper, but then, they didn’t have much use for the vallus either.
Like my redesigns of the onager and carroballista base, it is a work-in-progress so please bear with me. Hopefully, someday I'll manage to get these written up as full articles. In the meantime, I look forward to your opinions and questions?
Many thanks to Vallus Itsvan, and Steve Peffley for their expertise and assistance.
The Dacian Reaper
On Trajan's Column in Rome there is a depiction of the preparations for the Roman assault on a hilltop fortress near the end of the Second Dacian War. (105-6 AD) In the upper right-hand corner of the scene, at the base of the Dacian fortifications are three roughly-triangular wheeled structures. Conventional wisdom, based on the work of Otto Lendle, suggests that these are the remains of Roman siege engines called ship's prow tortoises left over from a previous assault. It is my intent to dispel this notion and replace it with a more plausible explanation of their origin and function.
(Refer below to Figure #1 From Conrad Cichorius, Die Reliefs der Traianssäule)
The ship's prow tortoise as first described by Apollodorus of Damascus in his text Poliorcetica (Siegecraft) was also triangular and could be mounted on wheels. According to his account it was designed to deflect wagons and barrels packed with logs that were rolled down at them by the defenders. Since Apollodorus was also the Chief Architect of the Column, it is easy to assume that these are the machines he described. Beyond having wheels and a superficial similarity of shape, there are a number of inconsistencies which contradict this conclusion;
The first incongruity is placement. If these were used as mobile walls to deflect logs and barrels rolled down upon the Romans, one would expect to find them in disarray somewhere in the no-man's land between the fort and the besieger's lines rather than lined up neatly in echelon at the top of the slope. Two of the three barrels shown appear to be resting at the foot of the wall.
The second is the structure of the machines. They have prominent triangular frames but there are no protective walls. If we are to believe, as suggested, that they are burned out hulks then we must then explain how they all burned in such a consistent manner and why the barrels next to them show no damage. Instead of defensive barriers these machines have a number of sharpened stakes and a hook or blade, all of which are facing down slope at the Romans. As a general rule, the offensive surfaces (i. e. sharp bits) of a weapon are most effective when pointed at the enemy.
The wheels are another significant feature. Their large diameter and placement at the outermost corners of the frame are more like those of an off-road vehicle than the iron bound rollers Apollodorus described. They would be ideal for careening at high speed down the hill, but superfluous if one were inching a heavy structure uphill in the face of enemy fire.
Having established that these are almost certainly not Roman tortoises, it is time to offer a theory of what they might have been and who made them. By default, credit for them goes to the besieged Dacians. This is supported by the fact that most Roman weapons had straight blades while the signature weapon of the Dacians was the two-handed falx, a hooked blade strikingly similar to the ones on these machines. The Latin word for scythe is falx. I began thinking of these weapons as Dacian Reapers, which brought to mind another obscure machine invented in Belgic Gaul.
Described in the mid first century by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History as a novel method of harvesting grain the vallus was designed to be pushed forwards through the standing grain shearing the heads off the crop leaving the straw in the field. The term vallus (a derivative of vallum or palisade) referred to the prominent row of forward-facing spikes which bunched up and stripped the stalks. Surviving images of the device showed that it bore a striking resemblance to the basic layout of these machines. They share an angular frame jutting rearwards from a transverse axle bearing a projecting row of “teeth”. It is easy to imagine some besieged farmer surrounded by serried ranks of the legions as numerous as summer wheat, looking to his experience for a way of mowing them down. This romantic bubble was nearly burst by the reality that the Mosel Valley where the vallus was invented is a long way from the Danube. The Romans, possessing an abundant supply of slaves had little need for such a labor saving device. They apparently did little to promote its use in other regions of the Empire. How then, could one establish a plausible means of transmission for this technology between domesticated Gaul and the Dacian hinterlands? Solving that riddle proved surprisingly easy.
Figure #2 The Gallic Reaper (Vallus) on a relief from Trier
The vallus was invented by the Treveri Tribe in the area around present day Arlon. They were described by Pomponius Mela as the “most enlightened of the Belgae”, and they prospered under Roman colonization until 70 AD when they joined the Batavian Rebellion. When the rebellion failed, a large number of their most prominent nobles fled east to live among their Germanic Allies. The importance of the harvester to their material culture is evidenced by the fact that a number of them had adopted the name Vallus. The dispersion of their descendants throughout the region is covered in greater detail in a manuscript being published by a fellow Roman Army Talk Forum Member Vallus Istvan, AKA “Treveri Gaul”. Finding people named after the machine you are investigating still thriving in the area after nearly two millennia makes it very plausible that they brought their technology and industrious nature along as well.
With a clearer view of the Dacian Reaper’s origin and purpose there are still several unanswered questions about it’s appearance and tactical deployment to consider. Taking the images from the column literally in the absence of other sources, it appears that the weapon’s timbers and wheels were arranged as an elongated right triangle rather than the symmetrical isosceles triangle one might expect. The asymmetry continued with the blade/hook/falx affixed to only one hub of the axle. The potential value of this lopsided contraption was not apparent until I tested a scale model built as faithfully as possible to the Trajanic frieze.
Figure #3 Photo reconstruction with the model in place of the middle weapon
When rolled rapidly into rows of obstacles (similar to advancing assault troops) the machine has a tendency to slew violently to the right. Imagine a person running full speed downhill and hooking a tree with their right arm. The trailing wheel then swings in a wide arc, striking the line to the left of the original point of impact. Turning sideways in this manner allows the machine to affect a wider swath of the target, instead of just punching through and continuing on downhill. If the impact fails to stop the device it continues on diagonally, striking subsequent ranks at a flanking angle.
Perhaps the hardest part of this project has been estimating the size of the actual machine. Using the size of the largest known falx blades as a guide yields a wheel height four to five feet and an overall length around twenty feet. This sets the height of the stakes and blade in the knee to groin area of opposing infantry. Too high to jump over, too massive to stop, and nothing but wheels or points to grab hold of. Facing such a weapon would be a daunting prospect. Finding willing participants for full-scale trials may prove difficult.
Figure #4 3D computer Model of the Dacian Reaper
This brings us back to Apollodorus and his reason for including these novelties on his tribute to Emperor Trajan. Much of the column is devoted to the glorious accomplishments of the Emperor and his men and the perils they faced. What better way highlight the hardships than to show some of the terrible tricks their foe employed? His Poliorcetica is believed to have been written years later. Isn’t it more reasonable to assume that the ship’s prow tortoise was developed as a countermeasure in response to the incident depicted? The Romans never seem to have adopted the Dacian Reaper, but then, they didn’t have much use for the vallus either.
P. Clodius Secundus (Randi Richert), Legio III Cyrenaica
"Caesar\'s Conquerors"
"Caesar\'s Conquerors"
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