01-07-2013, 10:08 PM
Frank,
While there is evidence for the use of fire arrows and onagers throwing incindiary projectiles, the whole scene is anachronistic or just plain wrong on a number of points, such as....
#1. Wood-framer euthytone scorpions nearly 200 years after the last shred of evidence for them.
#2. The conspicuous absence of any arched palintone iron-framers almost a century after Trajan appears to have used them exclusively in the Dacian wars and even the enemy had them.
#3. Onagers with baskets on the end of their arms. Onagers had slings "of tow or iron", the latter presumably for hot or flaming objects.
#4. Onagers, or for that matter any, Roman artillery with wheels attached directly to the frame.
#5. Onagers with a large vertical buffer frame to arrest the arm's forward motion and release the flaming jars. Like wheels, spoons, spur gears, and baskets, that component is the product of the fertile minds of Victorian and Edwardian era historians (Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey in particular)raised on the classical misdirections of renaissance artists.
Interposing a few good and accurate elements with blatant, but widely held falsehoods makes good entertainemt, but bad history. Just like cowboys and pirates or cavemen and dinosaurs.
While there is evidence for the use of fire arrows and onagers throwing incindiary projectiles, the whole scene is anachronistic or just plain wrong on a number of points, such as....
#1. Wood-framer euthytone scorpions nearly 200 years after the last shred of evidence for them.
#2. The conspicuous absence of any arched palintone iron-framers almost a century after Trajan appears to have used them exclusively in the Dacian wars and even the enemy had them.
#3. Onagers with baskets on the end of their arms. Onagers had slings "of tow or iron", the latter presumably for hot or flaming objects.
#4. Onagers, or for that matter any, Roman artillery with wheels attached directly to the frame.
#5. Onagers with a large vertical buffer frame to arrest the arm's forward motion and release the flaming jars. Like wheels, spoons, spur gears, and baskets, that component is the product of the fertile minds of Victorian and Edwardian era historians (Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey in particular)raised on the classical misdirections of renaissance artists.
Interposing a few good and accurate elements with blatant, but widely held falsehoods makes good entertainemt, but bad history. Just like cowboys and pirates or cavemen and dinosaurs.
P. Clodius Secundus (Randi Richert), Legio III Cyrenaica
"Caesar\'s Conquerors"
"Caesar\'s Conquerors"
