Plumbata

[Renatus]

Bruce,

There is a lot in your two posts and I do not intend to try to deal with all your points individually. That could merely degenerate into a tit-for-tat exchange that would lead nowhere. I will instead pick up on points that particularly strike me as requiring comment. If others occur to me later, I will deal with them then.

First, you say that none of the reports of earlier experiments mention wind conditions. I don't know what you have been reading but W. B. Griffiths in the Arbeia Journal mentions a strong cross-wind and John Eagle in his report speaks of a three-quarter following wind, albeit in relation to only one of his tests. Robert Vermaat specifically chose sheltered sites to avoid his tests being affected by wind.

You seem mystified by my saying that we do not know what these weapons were actually like. I don't know how I can make this any plainer. We have the metal parts but, as to the rest, we have only the vague description in 'De rebus bellicis' plus its illustrations which are some removes from the original and probably not very reliable. Only one shows the weight and that is in connection with the provision of spikes and apparently not as we see it in the surviving metal parts. You say that arrows have flights at the end of the shaft whereas the shaft of the plumbata projects behind the flights. That is only because that is how experimenters have reconstructed it. It need not be correct. For what it is worth, the illustrations in 'De rebus bellicis' have the flights at the end of the shaft, like arrows.

You say that you have not put yourself forward as one of the testers. This may be so but I would be very surprised if your experience did not bear upon how your sons performed. I am quite sure that, if you thought that they were doing it wrong, you would say so. This brings me to a crucial point. You say that modern day Europeans do not have the same experience of throwing sports as in America and that relatively few know how to throw overarm using the proper grip and technique. I need hardly say that the Romans did not have the American experience either. To the best of my knowledge, the Romans did not play baseball. You simply cannot take you experience and assume that the Romans had the same. In fact, a truer test may well be by those without that experience.

You have brought up the two Illyrian legions and postulated that the names Joviani and Herculiani somehow derived from their technique in throwing plumbatae. There is no mystery about this. They were the two senior palatine legions and their names derive from the divine names assumed by Diocletian and Maximian, Jovius and Herculius respectively. If there were anything in your theory that their technique related to illustrations of the manner on which Jupiter delivered his thunderbolts, it would be immediately apparent that he employed the standard javelin grip.

This finally brings me to Kavan's eminently sensible comment that the grip should be on or just behind the point of balance. This is what the Anonymous seems to be describing. I would suggest that a more profitable area for research would be to see whether a plumbata delivered with that grip could achieve Vegetius' criterion of outranging a javelin. I know that some researchers have tried this and been disappointed but one of John Eagle's tests using, in effect, the pub darts throw did outdistance by a small margin the maximum javelin throw achieved by Quinta in tests reported in the Arbeia Journal in 1992, so it does seem possible, given a suitable amount of practice . In short, those who have abandoned this method and resorted to holding the plumbata by the end of the shaft and throwing it overarm or underarm may have given up too easily. As I have said before, we need not be looking for these super-distances.