in the articles there are a few well known (to us at least) quotes from vegetius, concerning slings, slingers in the roman army, their positioning in the battle-order and a little about balearic slingers.

i'm reading his Epitoma rei militaris now, and i've found a quote that i haven't seen on this site before, so here it is:

in the book II, paragraph 23.


Quote:

Archers and slingers would put up a scopae i.e. a bundle of twigs or hay and distanced themselves 600 paces* from the target, so that they could hit their mark more often with the arrow, or at least with  the stone from the fustibalus. ... It's necessary to be accustomed to rotate the sling only once around one's head, when the stone is being cast from it.

*about 178 meters

please take note that i have the materials in croatian, so the clumsiness of the txt is due to my translation, vegetius is not to be blamed because of it :P

Thanks Sir,

I might have to track down a copy ( eventually) and read it myself

Marc Adkins


Mordechaj wrote on Jun 14^th, 2007 at 6:10pm:

in the articles there are a few well known (to us at least) quotes from vegetius, concerning slings, slingers in the roman army, their positioning in the battle-order and a little about balearic slingers. i'm reading his Epitoma rei militaris now, and i've found a quote that i haven't seen on this site before, so here it is: in the book II, paragraph 23. Quote: Archers and slingers would put up a scopae i.e. a bundle of twigs or hay and distanced themselves 600 paces* from the target, so that they could hit their mark more often with the arrow, or at least with  the stone from the fustibalus. ... It's necessary to be accustomed to rotate the sling only once around one's head, when the stone is being cast from it. *about 178 meters please take note that i have the materials in croatian, so the clumsiness of the txt is due to my translation, vegetius is not to be blamed because of it :P

oh, it's a really interesing book. just be sure to find an edition that has good explanations and prologue, because by just reading "dry" materials there could be a lot of misunderstandings...


the bold part is for the balearic "traditional" style  :P

The need for a unified way of launching is quite needed. The slingers had to act as one, so that everything went off perfectly. Imagine the chaos if all these slingers in the rows did their own style of launches :P