Is not the crossbow a little too medievil?.

[AnthoniusII]

Does any one knows what palintone means?
Many confuse names that describe weapons, names that describes those weapons tasks and names that describe the mechanical enginearing principals those devices work under!
I can understand the confusion because in west europe , terminology uses the Hellenic names and terms without explaining them to the public!
Palintonon (gr:παλιντονον) is how the devices work and not thedevices them selves!
Its like decribing a modern asault rifle!
When someone will post the name M16 and other will post the phrase "asault rifle" and an other will post the phrace "gus oparated"!!
Ans an argument will be completed when finally someone will add to the dispute his abjection to the phrace "asault rifle" with the phrase "machine gun"!!!
All 4 will describe M16 but they wont agree to what they describe!
Ussing M16 example we come back to our dispute:
Catapelltes (gr :καταπελτης) means any device that aims to penetrate shields and armors in order to kill those who carry them!
Also the name changes according of what projectile that device uses (in our case arrows or stones).
If those devices used the energy prodused by ropes and not a piece of wood (like a simple bow) then the device was known also as polintonos catapeltes!
All those devices that launched ANY kind of projectiles were also known as Balistas!
Romans found those devices when they conquered Syracuse and they used the Hellenic terminology!
Scorpion is a name of an advanced such device given by troops or by its manufacturers!
Scorpio is like the code name M16 in our previus example!
Onager is also a name given by troops to decribe the devices movement affects in every shot! It does not decribe either the device its self nore the enginearing principals it used to work!
Romans had no confusion of these matters! Confusion came when historians of late 18th century, entire 19th century and early 20th one tried to "translate" Roman and Greek names for devices that could not understand! If "catapult" throws stones -they thought" then balistas throw arrows and onagers throw mules!!!!(just kidding for the last one)!
But now history has more and more infos in its disposal we must be able to try to learn the right terminology those people in the past used for their devices!
We can not "teach" ancient" Greeks or Romans their language just because we are in a confusion!
We must use terms they used under the meanings they used it for!

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Palintone means the arms face back towards the stock, Euthytone means the arms face away towards the target.

D.B. Cambell's "Ancient Siege Machinery: Some Hypothesis Reexamined" thoroughly differentiates the terminology and is available on Academia.edu for free.

As for handheld engines, the Romans did not use a Handheld Torsion Engine as far as we know. The Roman crossbow was not a torsion engine and did not have the power of one.

[Yayattasa]

The Comitatus reenactment site has a point about being able to equip cavalry with those arcuballista and pressing them against the saddle to draw the bow to load it.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Yes, its possible Ammianus' "Balistarii" and "Cataphractarii" combination was not artillerymen (which he usually calls Tragularii) but crossbowmen.

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

Yes, its possible Ammianus' "Balistarii" and "Cataphractarii" combination was not artillerymen (which he usually calls Tragularii) but crossbowmen.

Wait didn't the old BI had a cav unit which did have crossbow? I remember it was a roman unit.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Barbarian Invasion had "Bucellarii" which were foot-soldiers armed with crossbows (as well as Romano-British crossbowmen and Pictish crossbowmen).

No RTW or BI mod I know of ever had mounted units with Crossbows.

[wulfgar610]

Wait didn't the old BI had a cav unit which did have crossbow? I remember it was a roman unit.

They had a sort of "chariot" carrying a scorpion that could fire on the move.

[AnthoniusII]

Barbarian Invasion had "Bucellarii" which were foot-soldiers armed with crossbows (as well as Romano-British crossbowmen and Pictish crossbowmen).

No RTW or BI mod I know of ever had mounted units with Crossbows.

Strange though because Boucelarii/Voucellarii term refered to a personal guard of an important person as his private and personal bodyguard!
The term can be translated as "those that share their bread(food)-with their boss-", and that is why they were mostly horsemen! Like the famous Boucellarii of Flavius Belisarius that were Roman high class citizens that followed him as soldiers in his private army!
I remember that NikeBG mentioned a Bulgarian bodyguard unit similar name of the 8th-10th centuries!
For the Romans the term was hellenised after Emperor Heracleius' reformes to Trapezitae that had the exact same meaning (thos that share the same table (aka bread, aka food)-with their boss)!
For the history Trapezitae units transformed to light horse units that the only thing the reminded their original task was their name!

[Karnil Vark Khaitan]

They had a sort of "chariot" carrying a scorpion that could fire on the move.

yeah you are right was thinking of med 2 sorry

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

There was the Carroballista (which was used into the 4th century if the De Rebus Bellicis suggests anything) which was a Scorpion (later a Ballista) on a cart drawn by oxen or horses.

[THEMIK DK]

Crossbow units should be sort of rare and expensive.

[wulfgar610]

Crossbow units should be sort of rare and expensive.

There was nothing special about the hand held crossbows of the era, the Chinese had already been handing them out en mass to their levy infantry prior. But they were simply compound bows set in a frame so any fool could use them, so no better than ordinary bows but with a slower rate of fire. Crossbows of the more powerful kind were a tad beyond the purely hand holdable.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Composite Bows, compound bows weren't invented until the 20th century. Completely different things.

Palintone and Euthytone engines are NOT crossbows, they work on a completely different principle.

[wulfgar610]

Composite Bows, compound bows weren't invented until the 20th century. Completely different things.

Palintone and Euthytone engines are NOT crossbows, they work on a completely different principle.

Yes, sorry I mix the two terms up. But basically the crossbow was there and some places common well before the middle ages. It became the weapon of townsfolk who generally had no background in the use of common bow. There is nothing to say its use was that uncommon in the 5th century Rome and couldn't have been a very useful garrison weapon.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Well, the interesting thing is that proper use of the bow was widespread in the Roman era, most soldiers were trained in how to shoot a composite bow.

[wulfgar610]

Well, the interesting thing is that proper use of the bow was widespread in the Roman era, most soldiers were trained in how to shoot a composite bow.

The evidence suggests widespread manufacture of the composite bow towards end of Western Empire. And yeah, anybody can be trained to fire the easier to use composite bow. It is the hitting the target which is the hard part that takes years of practice. The key issue with the crossbow was achieving accuracy with relatively little training.

I suppose less than perfect archers can still do area fire. Arrow-fire even at range is nasty to unprotected flesh, whether horse or light infantry.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Horse archers were the only ones really trained to perfect accuracy. Infantry archers were expected to do things like ambushes, sieges, and sitting behind the infantry doing area fire (or in the case of Taginae, firing into the charging Goths from either flank creating a hyper-lethal crossfire when Tortilla Totila tried to surprise the Romans during lunch break).

[Geronimo2006]

Barbarian Invasion had "Bucellarii" which were foot-soldiers armed with crossbows (as well as Romano-British crossbowmen and Pictish crossbowmen).

No RTW or BI mod I know of ever had mounted units with Crossbows.

In BI the WRE had a Equites Sagittarii unit that were cavalry archers but not crossbows.

[wulfgar610]

Actually there's conjecture that some style of mechanical arrow firing weapon was used on horseback by some cultures, but the weapon remained rare.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Actually there's conjecture that some style of mechanical arrow firing weapon was used on horseback by some cultures, but the weapon remained rare.

You mean the conjecture about the Sassanid "Panjangan" or however you spell it, which has been disproven not to be a crossbow that shot 5 bolts at once, but an arrow-firing technique for rapidly releasing arrows in a barrage?