11-01-2007, 12:10 PM
Quote:interesting that these may have been men throwing them, I did not know that.
Polyaenus has a reputation for being somewhat erratic, so anything he says must be weighed up carefully. In addition, he doesn't have a great reputation for artillery knowledge. One of his few passages about catapults places them in the hands of Cambyses in 525 BC, which is clearly a mistake.
In the Onomarchus passage, he doesn't specifically mention catapults, and Stefanos' reference to 30 mina weight does not appear in the text that I have seen -- perhaps he has a variant? A straightforward reading of the text would imply men throwing rocks, which (we know) was a perfectly acceptable ancient battle tactic.
In the absence of reliable evidence, it's a matter of weighing up probabilities. We really must question the report of stone-projecting catapults in the hands of a minor Greek warlord at such an early date when not even Philip II had catapults. (Remember: Philip was remembered down through the ages for his sponsorship of siege equipment. He is most probably the driving force behind the development of catapults in Greece.)
Quote:What is the arguement for them not being used?Simply that they aren't mentioned again in the battle, which seems to go off in another direction. The likelihood is that they were rapidly over-run. If they had been at all successful, Polybius would surely have said so. But they simply disappear from the account of the battle.
This is entirely to be expected, if you envisage the scene! No other ancient commander even considered using artillery in the ebb-and-flow of battle, unless they were firmly entrenched (as Sulla and Caesar appear to have done). Even then, their slow rate of operation can't have contributed much, and they would quickly become redundant if the action moved elsewhere.
