The Roman Gadget Archaeologists Can't Figure Out | March 29, 2022 | Sideprojects
Posted on 04/03/2022 6:52:09 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The Roman Gadget Archaeologists Can't Figure Out | March 29, 2022 | Sideprojects
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Very doubtful
That’s a great catch! But I don’t see sufficient detail. It could still have been on the staff for the legionary standard though.
The Romans had a weird little trumpet-like gizmo they used on the end of a staff, and the cavalry charges were accompanied by a sort of train-like whistle that rose in volume with velocity. The noise alone struck fear into adversaries.
Well, yeah. It’s a 300 year old problem, and we’ve all only been on it since this morning. ;^)
Good pt.
That was an “OFFICIAL” Magic 8 Ball answer😀
He did say the heavy side would land down but that’s not 100% true, land that way more often but not always. And maybe it was like craps, most common roll is a loser. And really there’s so many things you could do. Put stuff inside, shake it around and see where it falls out. Maybe put a bunch of sticks in the ground and get points for landing it around a stick. The lack of instructions pretty much guarantees it was entertainment. Maybe one guy started making them and that area had a little fad.
;>)
Without a doubt.
It could be a, uh, companion for those lonely nights of sentry duty...
The guy dismisses the idea of a dismount device as he seems to think many hundreds would be needed in any charge. But it only takes one horse stepping on one of them to totally disrupt a massed charge.
The holes would make them easier to roll and to break; the nobs easier to kick out under a hoof, once stepped on - like stepping on marbles for a horse.
Broken ones would be even more effective as they could cause the horse’s hoof to become cut on the sharp edges and even caught in the casing - possibly breaking the horse’s leg.
Maybe the wrapping solution you offer was why they were only used for a short period. Once used, the enemy would be wise to the ploy and find other ways to defeat such a tactic.
Doesn’t seem good for that. But who can say.
If the surface weren’t soft dirt, perhaps. If these were projectiles, that could be mildly disruptive, and would wind up on the ground in the middle of the charge as it continued into the rain of stuff. But rocks are free, and there aren’t enough of these to make this make sense.
Broken pottery would also work, and the Romans left a lot of that in piles wherever they lived a while. But they are known to have used javelins, arrows, even sling stones, plus their artillery (which is where the word comes from I think), which was effective against troops as well as fortifications.
Heh... I have to say, I’m impressed by the level of interest, it’s proved impossible to predict which GGG topic will nab it.
The problem with the dismount idea is caltrops existed already. Way easier to make. Sharp and therefore much more effective.
This is one I’ve had a number of nerdy discussions about already. Of course most of my friends are gamers, so we always lean there. In the end we’re like “give us 6 of those, a standard Roman soldier kit and 2 hours, we’ll have a dozen games sketched out from simple gambling to complex monopoly type stuff”.
if you blow it up you can see 5 balls and five sides
Us`n kids here in the mountains used to get big apples from our orchard, run a spear thru it and use it for penetrating wooden walls of old barns. Same principle. F=MA ... So I recognized the shaft holes right away. The many sided Roman spear weight facilitated a rapid spear-end jab-and slide-on means of battlefield operation coz weight`s sitting on the ground meant an open hole was always upward and level.
We like Romans. Ah, the days of tough battles, followed by rape, pillage, and plunder. What good times they must have been. ;-D
Maybe it was a tool for measuring standardized shaft sizes.
This is an easy one. It’s the Roman version of TurboTax.
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