Hi friends… Ah! it have passed a year since my last post here, although I enter to read from time to time. As said in Reply 283, wich show the different designs of the cestros sling, I was working with a new design that could be the original Macedonian. Past summer I´ve tested the design exhaustively and have found that is the best of all others. It locates the point of attachment of the dart over the fins, like in the Hollenback design.
Thanks David M. for that link on Latin, it´s awesome that somebody has raised the text of Livius on the cestros there and I wonder if Archimedes is a buddy of this forum too. I like his interpretation of the text since it agrees with my new design. I will enter that Latin forum to continuing commenting the text with them to see if we all are able to definitively clarify the mystery of the cestros.
Usually, priority is given to the cestros text of Polibius since it is previous and apparently Livius was inspired by him. Nevertheless, the text of Livius is more explicit in the description of the most enigmatic part of the weapon: the way of atachement of the dart to the sling. As I said at the beginning of the topic, Livius uses the mysterious word " scutalia" , very rare in Latin, so rare that it only appears twice in all kept Latin texts, being the second time also by him in a text that describes the Achaean sling: “et est non simplicis habenae, ut Balearic aliarumque gentium funda, sed triplex scutale, crebis suturis duratum…” (and were not made of two single strap, like those of the Balearic slingers, but they consist of three thongs, stiffen by being sewn together…). Here the mysterious word does not show any ambiguity since it talks about a pouch made of three pieces or strips of leather sewn to each other to make the concave shape of the pouch. And in my opinion that is the real meaning of the word “scutale” (plural scutalia): pouch or part of the pouch. And according to this meaning, the correct translation of the text of Livius “funda media duo scutalia imparia habebat” would be: the middle of the sling (that is, the pouch) was formed by two unequal pieces. We would have then a splitted pouch, but unlike the habitual thing, one of the parts would be longer than the other.
I always have interpreted the word “scutale” like pouch, and my first design, based on Bertrand´s one, interpreted the text “funda media duo scutalia imparia habebat” like a sling with two little pouches in its center to attach the dart ends. This design have some problems with the point, that nail the leather of the little pouch and makes necessary a sophisticated design to avoid it, as was seen in the thread. Eventually I thought on the other possible interpretation, very bizarre, a pouch made of two unequal parts or pieces. I made that sling and try to attach the dart to it by the fins, the only possibility to do it. After some castings I knew this design was a success. The inequality of the two “scutalia” allows the attachement so that the longest “scutale” partially surrounds the tail of the dart making it to leave straight, without deviation. The pictures clarify better what I say.
The text of Polibius is more generic in the description of the sling, more ambiguous, and it has been translated generally in the sense that the two thongs of the sling were of different length, which have conditioned the translation of Livius text in the same sense. We have to consider that the linguistics and translators are not experts in armament, and not dedicated either to experimental research, reason why they make common or banal interpretations of the ancient weapons they describe.
The sling is simple to make and the pouch is an evolution from a conventional splitted one, that can be used too to cast the cestros but with more oscillation and less control. The ranges are spectacular, 100 or 150 meters can easily be reached depending on the weight of the dart.
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