01-26-2006, 06:29 AM
Quote:aitor iriarte:1q4r91xv Wrote:Our plumbatas weigh around 300 grams. Most of them break on impact and we're start to wonder if that is not a more or less intended 'mishap' (A broken plumbata cannot be sent back... :wink: )That might in some cases explain why we find broken plumbatae, but never a sign of the shaft.
Hey Robert - might that not be because they were made of wood? 8)
Quote:But then I read about the pilum, of which we also thought that it was designed to break..
Yep. And that was wrong, too, according to Peter Connoly... :wink:
Quote:Are the barbed heads not reason enough to assume they would not be easy to extract and hurl back?
I discussed this with Derk Groeneveld and he also had some doubts. Did such weapons (designed to be used once) ever exist?
Well, I'd guess... no. After all, if archers collected their arrows after a battle, and defenders in a walled-town even let their men down on ropes
at night to retreive those funny-shaped stones (which they threw at the
beseiging forces during the day) then I's say that no weapon was ever
considered truly expendable (if there was even a chance of getting it back to use again) :wink:
Ambrosius
"Feel the fire in your bones."