11-16-2007, 09:18 PM
Quote:the idea of human stonethrowers doesn't make sense to me and would hardly be worth recording.......and what Polyaenus actually says is"petrobolous mechanas" - stone throwing machines!That was Marsden's mistake, Paul. Polyaenus just says "stone-throwers". Other authors writing in Greek (e.g. Appian) use the word to mean "men chucking rocks".
And why doesn't stone-throwing by hand make sense? It has a long and honourable pedigree, in the literature and sculptural evidence. If Philip's phalanx was repulsed using this humble method, all the more reason to record it!
Quote:...and there is no inherent reason that the Phocians shouldn't have possessed and used non-torsion catapults against Philip...That's certainly the argument used by people who wish to interpret Polyaenus's stone-throwers as machines. Occam's trusty razor advises caution, though. If Xenophon or even Diodorus, somebody half-way reliable, had mentioned stone-throwing machines, that would've been quite a different matter. But it's Polyaenus! And he doesn't even say they're machines! So, basically, the evidence is ... zero.
hock: I think the death blow to this argument is the fact that Philip II didn't ever acquire stone-throwing machines. He was too busy developing arrow-shooters. Alexander is the first guy that we hear of using "stone-projectors". Up until then, anything remotely resembling a catapult was used to shoot arrows.
The catapult was, after all, based on the concept of the bow. It stands to reason that it took a couple of generations for people to make the mental leap and realise that bigger machines, designed along the same lines, could shoot stones, too. (And don't you dare say "onager". :wink: ) It's just a pity that Heron didn't record the early history of the catapult in more detail.
