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General >> Project Goliath - The History of The Sling >> Slingers at the Battle of Troy
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Message started by Asleepundertrees on Nov 10th, 2008 at 12:40pm

Title: Slingers at the Battle of Troy
Post by Asleepundertrees on Nov 10th, 2008 at 12:40pm
I saw a discovery channel special about the battle at Troy.  The archeologist found small piles of sling stones.  They said you could tell that the stones were used over and over because of the little marks in the ends of the stones.  Apparently the Trojan defenders were lobbing sling stones down into the Greek attackers.  They showed a reenactment shot of a few guys slinging stones in an underhand motion.

Title: Re: Slingers at the Battle of Troy
Post by StaffSlinger on Nov 10th, 2008 at 1:03pm
Rats!  I saw that there was to be a show on Troy; but I'd seen several recently, so gave it a pass!  Oh well; it'll probably be on again this week one day.

Title: Re: Slingers at the Battle of Troy
Post by Asleepundertrees on Nov 10th, 2008 at 1:49pm
They talked mostly about the seige engines of the time and even referred to the trojan horse as a seige engine.  The section about the slingers was brief but you so little of slinging on TV that it was pretty cool.

Title: Re: Slingers at the Battle of Troy
Post by Camo-sling on Jan 14th, 2009 at 2:23am
Hmm. I thought the Trojans purely used longbows because the Greeks were wearing heavy armour. interesting.

Title: Re: Slingers at the Battle of Troy
Post by MammotHunter on Jan 15th, 2009 at 7:59am
That's the best part about a sling; you don't NEED to penetrate the armor to inflict damage. Even if the Greeks were wearing bronze armor, the concussive force of a professional slinger hitting you with a direct shot would probably have one hell of an effect, and that's not even considering what a shot to the helmet (assuming you had one) might do. Then again, a sling is a great harrassment weapon, good to keeping something like a formation of hoplites and their shields busy while the javelineers and heavy infantry hit them from the other direction.

Title: Re: Slingers at the Battle of Troy
Post by Lycurgus on Jan 15th, 2009 at 8:10am

MammotHunter wrote on Jan 15th, 2009 at 7:59am:
That's the best part about a sling; you don't NEED to penetrate the armor to inflict damage. Even if the Greeks were wearing bronze armor, the concussive force of a professional slinger hitting you with a direct shot would probably have one hell of an effect, and that's not even considering what a shot to the helmet (assuming you had one) might do. Then again, a sling is a great harrassment weapon, good to keeping something like a formation of hoplites and their shields busy while the javelineers and heavy infantry hit them from the other direction.


Ahh There you have hit on the main problem with a Hoplite formation. Devastating in a frontal attack but relatively weak on the right flank. The early Roman army used this weakness to great effect and used sneaky side attacks and amush tactics. Bloody Romans, what have they ever done for us! ;)

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