Heron of Alexandria info request

[P. Clodius Secundus]

Cheiroballistra may have been invented by him, but obviously gained wide practical traction in the Roman army ....

Well, we know from Trajan's Column and the artifacts that a larger machine, carroballista?, was indeed fielded. I appears to have entirely replaced euthyone wood-framed scorpions from at least 100 AD forward. ( I think probably did so by the mid 80s, but that's another issue) :wink: There is no evidence that the "hand ballista" he described was ever adopted.

...doubling the size of the washers might not've reproduced what he particularly described, but it would reproduce how such machines would've worked once amplified and put into practical use by the military engineers.

Doubling the size of a rifle does not necessarily produce a workable cannon, just a very clumsy rifle. That is why cannons have things like elevating mechanisms, carriages, recoil mechanisms, and wheels. It's also why they don't need shoulder stocks, forehands, slings, and bayonet lugs. It's also why you rarely see a bolt-action howitzer. Once beyond human scale such a thing would be impractical. Many of Marsden's (and thus nearly everyone else's) interpretations of the texts were based on certain assumptions. In this instance I chose to examine a cornerstone of his argument, that Heron would not have written about a small and seemingly impractical weapon. What I've been discovering is that other than the instances where he is restating/editing the work of others, there are few if any practical applications of his designs. Without this rationale there is no excuse to improve upon the text by "adjusting" the numbers, adding components you think should be there, or ignoring ones that are.