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[Cheshire Cat]

this thread and the youtube video had me doing a whole lot of reading and remembering.

i can remember watching a BBC documentary about the romans in england, and their light artillery, which was a really stupidly large crossbow on wheels that fired a tiny little heavy bolt, and needed a few guys to crank, aim, load and fire.

like people are saying, it wasn't that fast, to move, but it didnt have to be. the roman army was a lumbering monstrosity, and they could use their supersize crossbow whenever they picked their battles, which was whenever they possibly could.

and also like people were saying, it was a morale killer that strongly discourage charging. they found remains of celts with the iron bolts stuck right through their spinal cords, and skills with neat little holes in one side and out the other. they tested a modern reconstruction against roman armor, however, and the segmented flexible breastplate held.

 aparently a big part of the terror was in how magical they seemed to the barbarians on the receiving end. they couldnt come up with their own big crossbows and things, because as the university engineering students i know of who recreate these things tell me, its really hard to make siege machinery which doesnt teari itself apart on first use and kill half the operators. and even if they captured the romans huge bows, they wouldnt penetrate the roman armor. perhaps cause internal mashing, but no piercing to speak of.

aparently archimedies the greek all round smart guy designed a complex gatling gun like spear launching machine, along with his legendary array of giant mirrors for burning ships. the romans got a lot of their good stuff off the greeks, though aparently archimedies particular automatic spearthrower was a bit complex for them. theres no excelent historical data on the ship burning mirrors, and most historians dismiss it.

giant ship burning mirrors are totally off topic from crossbows and siege bows, but still crazy awesome. even while a lot of physicists and other sciency types say it wont work, there are links and photos out there of a 1973 study where a line of 80 or so greek sailors from the navy all point a big flat mirror at a boat 50 metres away and it bursts into flames. some people at a historical society somewhere i forget did this with a ships sail and a university professors help with figuring out focal distances and stuff, and some solar power research guy used 100 bent mirrors in a field to burn off the tops of some trees he didn't like. most reliable info is Archimedes may have used a lot of hexagonal mirrors all linked together with hinges in a dish shape to set fire to roman ships a bowshot away. , even if nobody is sure its true. ill find the links for the above stuff tomorrow if people want.

so maybe when we get good sieges with siege towers and wall climbers, we can have our uber metalsmiths and mechanics make giant hinged segmented dishes of polished silver, and use them as a death ray to torch the goblin hordes and set aflame their advancing siege towers.

or, picture one flaming arrow flying forth to mark a target, and then atop your walls 100 stout dwarves with polished reflective shields swinging into position to focus a narrow beam of death upon the invaders and flame everything before them. 

gosh i type a lot.

[Marlowe]

Umm, the roman army was comparatively fast-moving compared to many of it's opponents, both strategically and tactically. In fact a roman infantry daily "march" is still a bit further than that of many modern mechanised armies.

As for "picking their battles"....most "barbarian" (I assume you meant northern european) opponents worked out pretty early on that they were at a significant disadvantage in an open battle compared to roman legions, due to more basic factors such as inferior personal weapons and armour (germans had only recently grasped steel-making when they entered history, and didn't have a lot of it for a while. Celtic swords were of notoriously poor quality. Hannibal's Celts were reported to have to straighten their swords against their legs after a few blows), lack of practice at unit and army cohesion (meaning most of these armies simply weren't used to working as a group) and often possibly numbers (Italy was one of the most densely-populated areas of the world in the last few centuries BC. The romans had more organised manpower resources than anyone they ever fought, even combined. Take note of the loss of 80,000 men as a result of ONE navigational mistake during the first punic war, the loss of 50,000 men at Cannae during the second, and in 80 BC the loss of another 50,000 at Arausio during the first contact with the Germans. Any one of these losses would have destroyed one of the Hellenistic states or any given barbarian confederation. The Romans could just try again until they won). What all this means is that most barbarian opponents of the Romans didn't need uber-artillery to be shy of open battle, they had plenty of reasons to resort to ambush and guerrilla tactics without it. And repeating ballistae aren't much use against guerrillas.

 Boudicea's defeat at the hands of Suetonius Paulus was a pretty rare event where a barbarian horde army (many of whom, I'm inclined to suspect, were just a peasant mob) actually attacked a numerically inferior Roman army in an entrenched position and got slaughtered. Well, unfortunately, Boudicea wasn't an experienced commander. Others were a bit more wise. The Germans didn't even bother defending their cities (I'm not sure if writing "cities" in conjunct to "barbarians" makes any sense, but it's what the Romans say) during Germanicus's "revenge" campaign after the Teutoburger Wald battle.

 So, the point of all this wall of text is that the Romans needed mobility as much as anyone else. In fact they probably needed it a bit more than most by the time of the early empire. "Picking their battles" wasn't really an option a lot of the time.

 Speaking of "Time", when do these "repeating ballistae" belong? They aren't in Caesar's time, nor in Tacticus's. I'm assuming that with the reference to "mountain warfare" they were something used for Trajan's war against the Dacians. The above poster said "celtic", but since nobody's decided whether Dacians are Celtic, Germanic, or Slavic, and since there's a problem with many people using "Celtic" as a catch-all title for anything northern european before 1000AD, that doesn't help much.

 By the way, the problem with the Archimedes burning mirror thing is that the story doesn't turn up until 500 years after the historical siege of Syracuse.

[Il Palazzo]

Jeez, people. Read Ceasar's "The war in Gaul". It's got answers for most of those questions, including comparisions of roman/barbarian physique, use of siege weapons, fighting against numerically superior foes, importance of mobility, hints on barbarian battle tactics(or lack of it), enormity of loses caused to the Celts(and they still wanted to fight).
And it's a first-hand account, not some guesses made by modern people.

[Cheshire Cat]

yarr, mr marlowe is more factual then i was. the stuff about the balista in england was just from a BBC documentary about the roman army in the area, i dont know what period it was from.

heres some links to a page with some of the stuff i was talking about on it.

Ancient Greek Artillery Technology from Catapults to the Architronio Canon
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/war/CatapultTypes.htm
"The Romans inherited the Catapult Technology from the Greeks and developed new types such as the onager. As many as 10 Catapults and 60 Ballistae were assigned to each legion."
above page is great. has explanations and diagrams of all the important greek and roman period artillery.

archimedes and his burning mirrors
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mirrors.htm
collection of studies and experiments on the feasability of burning ships with big mirrors

heliostats as death rays
http://www.rossen.ch/solar/deathray.html
some guy setting trees on fire with a field of mirrors

Archimedes defense of Syracuse (does not mention mirrors)
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Texts/Polybiius/TheDefenseOfSyracuseByArchimedes.html

the greek repeating ballista made by Archimedes and was apparently used in the defense of Syracuse, but i think evidence for it was only slightly better then for the mirrors. still, one can dream. there is a diagram of it on that site somewhere, but i cant find it again. it involved a hopper on top like a gatling gun full of huge bolts, and was operated by two men on each side turning a wheel. power was moved around using a flat chain, just like on a bicycle, which was aparently a huge piece of technology at the time. the turning of the wheel loaded, cocked and fired the thing, then brought the next projectile into place.

im going to have to go after Ceasars "war in gaul". im very far from being any kind of expert on this stuff and i really dont have a complete picture of how things from different time periods fit in together.

i like the fact that the roman daily march was in some cases longer then a modern mechanized army.

[Cypress]

They never invented armor because of a distinct lack of metal. What they used was very effective considering I believe they made it out of bamboo, and technically it was more advanced then European armor, just not as effective due to the material.

The Japanese, true. Their armor was minimal when it came to iron, although it was not made purely out of bamboo. The Chinese however were smelting copper and iron en masse around the time of the first emperor. They had the metal and the technology. Why there armor wasn't as heavy as a full plate of European armor probably just had something to do with the fighting styles the armor was built to defeat.

When you think about it, it's a weapon designed to kill the poor and leave the rich (-guys with armour and shields) standing. How politically suspect.

Early signs of a totalitarian goverment?

[Bricktop]

Jeez, people. Read Ceasar's "The war in Gaul". It's got answers for most of those questions, including comparisions of roman/barbarian physique, use of siege weapons, fighting against numerically superior foes, importance of mobility, hints on barbarian battle tactics(or lack of it), enormity of loses caused to the Celts(and they still wanted to fight).
And it's a first-hand account, not some guesses made by modern people.

Hpwever, evidence suggests that Caesar exaggerated his reports on the physique of the Celts and the size of their armies for politcal reasons. Afterall, when you have won what sounds more impressive? Saying that you won a battle against a small number of badly equipped warriors or that you won against a huge horde of 6 foot tall barbarians wielding the sort of weapon usually seen gracing an anime character?

[Il Palazzo]

Yes, one has to take his account with a grain of salt, however, remeber that there were a lot of people in Rome who 'disliked' Ceasar's growing power. They'd readily point out any inconsistencies, exaggerations and fallacies in his report.
The great thing about "War in Gaul" is that Ceasar managed to stay close to the facts *and* put himself in good light so skillfully.
Also, remember that every Roman could see with his own eyes how exactly the Celts and 'Germans' looked like, as there was a constant flow of newly acquired slaves during his campaings.(and if I remember correctly, this particular book describes only Germanic people as being considerably larger than average Roman solider)

[Marlowe]

It's probably one of the most common popular history blunders: talk about "Celts" endlessly and forget the more successful Germans ever existed. I think practically everything originating in northern europe before 1000AD or so has been described as "Celtic" at some point.

Caesar's numbers are almost certainly overstated, but overstating numbers is a classical history tradition. I can remember a passage in Xenophone where a persian army's numbers are somewhat casually estimated at 900,000 men, with a note that another 300,000 couldn't make it to the battle. From what I can remember, Caesar (or someone) gives Vercingetorix's strength at Alesia at about 85,000 within the city and 255,000 outside. This doesn't seem that significant until you add those numbers together and remember that Caesar had 34,000 men. It seems he just estimated the enemy numbers by taking his own strength and adding a zero.

Which must have been fun to do with roman numerals.

[Cypress]

... It seems he just estimated the enemy numbers by taking his own strength and adding a zero.

Which must have been fun to do with roman numerals.

How do you do that with roman numerals, anyway?
Also, isn't that kinda how we figured body count for vietnam? [/joke]

[Marlowe]

The Japanese, true. Their armor was minimal when it came to iron, although it was not made purely out of bamboo. The Chinese however were smelting copper and iron en masse around the time of the first emperor. They had the metal and the technology. Why there armor wasn't as heavy as a full plate of European armor probably just had something to do with the fighting styles the armor was built to defeat.

Specifically, they fought a lot of relatively-fast, lightly armed opponents such as the cheerfully ubiquitous Hsiung-Nu (means "Northern Slave" in that quaint Sinocentric way. A catch all term for the many nomadic tribes that line Chinas northern border.) This also explains their development of crossbows when the Romans weren't even using archers. Missile troops in general were very underused in europe between about 500BC and 500AD, not because people didn't know how, but because the missile weapons of the era were not effective at stopping a phalanx/legion/shieldwall.

The exceptions to this rule are the light cavalry nomad cultures and those that fought them on a regular basis. The mobility of light cavalry counteracts the relative weakness of their weapons, and the lightness of light cavalry allows arrows to be effect against them.