Benno's Figures

As if I would ever say anything about the use of thongs

I've just noticed that I've made a hilarious typo - it should read javelins on the thong - not javelins on the thing!

Last thought (I promise!): there have been suggestions that Celtic hill forts as best understood if you think of the design as relating to slinger defence (rather than some sort of concentric layered defence). This seems to make sense. As I said previously, the limitation on slingers is the inability of having them in multiple ranks so the amount of shot they can put down is limited. If however, you have lines of slingers, each line higher than the other........

I seem to recall something about this.....

Javalin-Akon, thong-Ankyle

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=sul- ... le&f=false

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... e_G384.jpg

Cheers

Ankyle - so much more refined and manly than thong!

As your reference makes clear, these are basically a form of sling as well.

Some interesting observations on the αγκύλη/amentum and sling here:
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=h ... s%3Disch:1
(nb: do not confuse the atlatl with the axlotl, although the latter would admittedly be rather disconcerting if thrown at the enemy...)
Has anyone mentioned baked clay slingshot? Again relatively easy to manufacture, and with the same ballistic properties as lead, if not the weight.
Incidentally, I believe Xenophon mentions in one of his works that an army on campaign should have a good supply of leather thong/things, for repairing weapons, armour, shoes etc... which would also be a source for improvised slings.

Mike
________________________________________________________________
Slings ain't what they used to be...

Good to see that on RAT they can as easily go "off topic" in the silly way we often do!

An depleted uranium axlotl would be a formidable weapon (though presumably only available to Central American armies).

I mentioned clay shot before. To be as effective as lead (in terms of impact), they would need to be quite a bit larger than the equivalent lead shot (KE=1/2MV2). This will tend to slow them down (because of surface area leading to increased air resistance). So they won't be anywhere near as effective as lead shot. Advantages would be that you can make clay to specific shapes and in areas where there might not be much in the way of useful natural stones. However, I suspect that their real advantage is for firing heated shot. You could heat clay to a much higher temperature than lead shot so it could act as an incendiary - as related by JC.

Ok well back to the Strelets Roman Slingers...... how to improve them.....
http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=1646
I dont have this set, but here are my suggestions....
No1 looks ok to me...
No2 would need the shield removed... difficult perhaps but not impossible as I find the plastic will carve fairly well(based on other strelets sets that I do have), perhaps add a new left arm?
No3 again fine I think the pose suggests the rotation is overhand(upwards and back wards) remove the shield and again maybe replace the left arm....
No4 remove sling and add a new one(drill hole in hand) that has actually been released(one end flying free) using thin copper wire flattened in the center etc, remove shield alter/add left arm as appropriate...

That should suffice....

Cheers

I thought I would ask Duncan head about illustrations of slingers with shields over on the ANCMED forum. Here is his reply:

Posted by: "headd1uk" duncan.head1@ntlworld.com headd1uk
Wed Jul 28, 2010 6:45 am (PDT)



"Douglas" <douglas_mckenzie@...> wrote:

> However, a rather more straight forward question for you: on
> another forum we had a very interesting discussion about poses
> of slingers (mostly 1/72 figures but that's irrelevant). One of
> our bugbears was poses of slingers with shields. Summary of lots
> of technical chat was that it isn't possible to use a sling
> effectively while carrying a large shield. Small shields are
> possible but only if strapped to the arm but we doubted what use
> a small shield would be to a slinger.
> We then investigated where the figure designers were getting their
> source material inspiration for slingers having shields and the
> trail mostly led back to otherwise excellent "Armies of the
> Macedonian and Punic Wars" by a certain Duncan Head.

Illustrations, and wargames figures, of slingers with small round shields go back much further than my AMPW. Have a look at Phil Barker's earlier book of the same name, or his "Armies and Enemies of Imperial Rome", or John Warry's "Warfare in the Classical World". I was sort of chickening out by including shielded slingers at the time, because it was the prevailing view then that you could use a sling with a small shield. In fact my shield_less_ Greek slinger was the innovation!

Hence my discussion under the figure of the Balearic slinger, that the small round shields carried on armstraps on some Balearic bronze statuettes _might_ have been usable for slingers. The Persian shielded slinger probably was a mistake.

Small bucklers for slingers would have been of the same use as for any other troops: you can move them around to deflect incoming missiles (allegedly you can usually see a javelin or arrow coming at you, but not another slingshot!) or if the enemy close with you, you can use them in close combat.

Slingers who _have_ shields are easy to track down - they're recommended for Byzantine shielded psiloi archers and even IIRC for some Byzantine heavy infantry - but they might well not use sling and shield at the same time. As for illustrations of slingers using shields, Ian Heath ("Armies of Feudal Europe" note to fig 39) says there's one in the Maciejowski Bible. You can troll through the images in the Maciejowski at http://www.medievaltymes.com/courtyard/ ... _bible.htm to find it, I don't know where it is - it is not David slaying Goliath, which was the obvious place to look!

cheers,
Duncan

Maciejowski Bible sling and buckler - leaf 42, death of Uriah, bottom right.
(Still trying to find Wally...)

He´s taken his hat off making him virtually impossible to find this time.

Hi Tantallon2 well I think that pretty much sums it up, nice of Duncan Head to take the time to reply with so much honesty.... hes quite right too most older slinger games figures I recall had shields for some reason, other then actual evidence... odd really...
I cant actually think of a reason a slinger would want to close to contact either unless hes cornered, collecting missiles is not really a problem.....
Not convinced by the strap on buckler vs jav etc if you have good balance and movement its easier to step to the side then wait for a spear/jav to arrive so you can deflect/block it, and I think an arrow may be moving too fast... again its probarbly best to dodge, the problem with deflecting is theres no certainty where the missile will go and theres a good chance it could hit you...
Whilst practicing with a friend using a live javalin in a game of "catch it and toss it back" and somehow got the sun in my eyes at which point I could no longer see the javalin flying towards me I was pretty well praticed at this and did it on a regular basis... so I leapt to the side and on the way the javalin went through the skirt of my tunic.... the most dangerous thing about missiles is the one you dont see, and only a large shield is likely to save you from that....
The problem with the medieval image is its less then realistic the slinger is defending against a sprear thust from a man in a tower it would make more sense for the slinger to be behind a pavaise so i dont see how its relevant.....

Cheers

Hi Ironsides.
That's pretty much exactly what I said on ANCMED in reply. I don't find the use of shields by slingers as anti-missile defences convincing. Large shields (such as those on the Hat and Zvezda Roman auxiliaries) are impractical for slingers to use but are good at stopping missiles. For some reason I hadn't thought of it before but large shields are pretty much restricted to close order infantry and they probably have them for primarily for anti-missile defence as they cannot dodge missiles (being in close packed ranks). For open order infantry, I agree: dodging makes more sense.

Slingers could use small shields in conjunction with slinging but these are pretty useless for catching missiles (the deflection problem occurred to me also). Also, slingers will be out of range of javelins (unless they are stupid) and out of range of many bows. You cannot dodge slingshot (most of the time) so what incoming missiles does a slinger have to worry about?

I agree that a buckler would be useful for close quarter fighting but this seems the last thing a slinger would want to do - much better to keep a healthy distance between yourself and the enemy infantry so you can keep peppering them. A small shield and little dirk aren't going to give you any hope against cavalry.

I'm beginning to think that the only medieval illustration of slingers using shields is this one: so all of the contemporary evidence for slingers having shields seems to boil down to two dodgy pictures!

It was good of Duncan to reply - he does often contribute on ANCMED. I'll be interested to see what reaction there was to my reply yesterday.

All the best
Dougie

Tacitus describes the Caledonians at Mons Graupius deflecting Roman missiles (presumably skirmishers' javelins) - with their swords and small shields (brevibus caetris), though it might have been an exaggerated 'old soldier's tale' fed him by his father-in-law...

From Gislis saga... early medieval?...
this is one version but there are others...

"It is said that the brothers neared the woods as Gisli entered them. He saw them and they, him as well. One of them hurled a spear at him, but Gisli took it in the air and shot it back, and it struck Tho­rod in the middle and plunged through him. Stein thereupon turned back to meet his companions and said it was rather hard going to find one's way through the woods."

Cheers

Re Bilsonius, I can only comment that Scots have always been show offs.