Hi there,

I'm an ancient historian by study and finally got round to writing a fictional book about a slinger growing up during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE).

I've been reading some very interesting pieces on here and hugely relieved that there is a place such as this. I'll probably be back to ask more stuff but I was interested in the following areas:

1. I see slingers using the overhead action in ancient Greece. Was this the only stance used at that time? I read that the stance using the sling underarm/to-the-side is far more effective. If so when did this come in?

2. What noises did slings make? I imagine a hum of sorts but was there a crack or snap?

3. What training did you undertake to improve accuracy? I'll credit any personal stories, perhaps you had a particular exercise you used?

4. When you first start slinging I imagine you ache and get sore in specific body parts/areas as you get used to it. What are those associated with slinging?

thanks again - a really interesting site!

I don't think there is any evidence for the stance at all. A cup by the painter Makron shows a guy readying a long sling-- . The Aspendian tetradrachms show a guy reading his sling by holding the pouch before his eyes, but that can develop any way. Virgil and Vegetius mention three turns above the head as normal, so what's called "helicopter" here, but was that normal earlier ?

Some kind of spin, and some kind of throw, sideways or vertically, is most likely.

1. Refer to Thearos on the historical stuff.

2. Paracord slings have a slight whirring sound but natural fiber slings like you'd have in historical times are pretty much silent. If you have a tab or a non-tapered release cord, when you release, it will let out a "thwop" noise. If you have a good tapered release cord, you can get a great snap, just like a whip. Here's a video of me slinging, you can turn it up and hear a pretty standard sling "crack". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7EW3zflrfY

3. Lots of practice with consistent ammunition on a good backstop and a target.

4. I've never had any physical problems slinging, but I know other people who've had their shoulder be a bit sore or lose some skin of their finger where the retention cord sets.

For the most part though, good slinging is a fairly relaxed motion. If you are fairly healthy and aren't slinging excessively heavy stones, you should be good to go all day without any pain.

Your warrior would be more realistically sore from PT or running or something similar that those in ancient military would need to participate in.

Make sure that your slinger never shoots in a straight line ("whanging"), but always L-O-B-S his shot (great big heavy stones) with incredible force and accuracy. You might include a sidekick who has just started slinging but is terrible at it, flatlines but always misses because he over-stresses his shots. 

Thearos wrote on Nov 27^th, 2013 at 12:07pm:

Make sure that your slinger never shoots in a straight line ("whanging"), but always L-O-B-S his shot (great big heavy stones) with incredible force and accuracy. You might include a sidekick who has just started slinging but is terrible at it, flatlines but always misses because he over-stresses his shots.

You could do that but, if your slinger is supposed to be a hero... well I think most of us can agree that no one ever looks up to the guy that slings his rocks at the same speed his grandmother can throw them.

Also, if he is actually supposed to be fighting enemy soldiers with his sling, you'll want to make sure he slings strongly in order to utilize the sling's full kinetic potential, and also to make sure the rock gets there before the enemy falls asleep from the boredom of watching a slinger throw so slowly. If the rock even gets there at all that is.

Perhaps when he first starts out slinging as a novice, he can attempt to lob unnecessarily heavy rocks, but as he realizes the sling's greater accuracy and power potential with reasonable weight and size rocks, and his capability to carry significantly more ammo, he'll then grow up to be a warrior and sling those egg sized rocks straight into the face of his enemy. Like a real man should.

::)

Even better, have your slingers ARGUE about this while peltasts run them down and capture them and hoplites nail them to trees.

http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1253927454/0#0

A Greek slinger of that period would use lead sling bullets weighing about one ounce. He would sling further than the archers of that period (see Xenophon's Anabasis) at a rate of ten shots a minute. A skirmishing group of sixty slingers (a small number for those days) would have a rate of fire equivalent to a machinegun.

They would use speed and rough ground to protect themselves from infantry attacks. Their greatest vulnerability was to cavalry. 

Slings can crack very loudly, or just make a soft 'whup', as desired. The projectiles hum or buzz in flight due to their very rapid rotation. On impact they would smash bones and pierce unprotected flesh but plate armour was enough to stop them. Seasoned Hoplites could take a sling bombardment but any lesser units without armour or discipline would be cut down and routed.

This is an excellent example of what we call the 'Greek style' today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTjrg6gwrsA

We have no idea how the Greeks actually used to sling because it was never described, but this takes their starting position and is very fast and powerful.

Here are some loud cracking slings with heavy stones from Mallorca: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4VwbJ8f7bE

Actually, we don't know if lead was used during the Pelop. war. Very possible, but no mentions before Xenophon (which takes us to 401 BCE, just after the Pelop. war).

ignore thearos on the lobbing - in a battle situation with consistent made ammo, an experienced slinger will pretty much sling in a flat trajectory up to about 100 - 150 metres.

I can keep up that kind of slinging all day, and have on consequetive days :-)
Thearos can't and seems to ignore anything he can't personally do in this regard :-)

The thing about slinging is that the sling is simply an extension of your arm. Stronger, fitter, trained arms are far more capable of sustaining flat trajectory slinging than untrained arms.
If you guy was a reguar slinger than you should assume that he's capable of sustained flat trajectory target slinging at leats out to 100 metres. Which is a lot further than most people realise.

It's a common trait among historians, with a few notable exceptions, to ignore anything they can't personally do. 

Lobbing is more for clearing obstacles like walls, ditches etc. Also useful for slinging larger rocks over walls, houses. In a riot situation you could lob large rocks into the next street quite easily.

For long distance battle slinging with moulded lead glandes, you would sling in a shallow parabola - not lobbing as such. A good slinger would be able to make 250-350 metres consistently. With lead ammo (that's important)

The common injuries sustained while slinging are very similiar to american baseball players.
Generally elbows, and shoulders.
Again if you sling regularly these parts of your body will be stronger and less prone to injury. Also fitness work and targeted exercise will massively reduce risk of injury.

Style wise - yeah, there's no real evidence. The depicted slingers on pottery-ware are always depicted in the same manner. But that starting position can lead to many different styles of slinging.

As far as sidearm being more effective - again it depends on what you are doing. Personaly I use it for distance slinging and fig 8 for closer more accurate slinging.

The problem with slings in ancient greece is that they were primarily peasant weapons and most historians didn't write much about peasants. So there's very little detail on greek slinging and slingers.

What we can do is show you how ANY slinger works and fights with a sling. Given the way slings work it's unlikely that different countries had radically different styles and techniques.

One thing I can tell you from personal experience is the sound a lead glande makes coming straight for you.
1 single glande sounds like a swarm of bees, I had one land about 10 feet directly in front of me - never saw it -but bloody hell was it loud !
I suspect this is a unique experience in the modern era :-)

The other people with me were hiding behind a quad bike about 30 feet away - my sanity has always been questionable :-)

It was a joke.

Anyways, notice that in the Anabasis, the Rhodians say that they can sling lead-- which does suppose that it's not a widespread skill in 401 BC. Troops of the satrap Tissaphernes MAY have adopted it shortly afterwards, which again suggests that it's a novelty.

Livy, using Polybius, seems to indicate that Achaian slingers practice on beaches (of course) by shooting through rings.

Hagesandros smiled privately, in pity. As the Rhodian had immediately guessed, the Peloponnesian slingers-- stocky, truculent figures with powerful biceps-- were unskilled beyond the most basic range, and their first stones, loosed straight at him with raging cries and all the might in the slingers' chunky arms, quickly drooped into the dirt after flying level for forty paces. The next stones, loosed at varying angles with the same grunting force, flew wild into the scrub.

Amateurs, thought Hagesandros, freed slaves used to slinging at sheep and playing farmhand games with targets behind their masters' country houses-- not to war slinging as a paid member of a perfectly honed troop of mercenaries.  He reached into the bag hanging in the crook of his elbow, and, without taking his eyes off the Peloponnesians 80 paces away, carefully fitted the big stone in the pouch of the long fighting sling. He adjusted the tension on the braided cords, and after one supple revolution that almost looked languid to the peltasts around him, let the stone fly, on a graceful arcing course, which soon vanished. The peltasts grinned, knowing what would come next. One of the Peloponnesian slingers suddenly flew backwards as if hit by a thunderbolt...

Note that a very important part of slinging is the windup.

Thearos wrote on Nov 27^th, 2013 at 2:38pm:

Anyways, notice that in the Anabasis, the Rhodians say that they can sling lead-- which does suppose that it's not a widespread skill in 401 BC. Troops of the satrap Tissaphernes MAY have adopted it shortly afterwards, which again suggests that it's a novelty.

This paper claims the first lead bullets are found at Marathon (490BC) http://www.academia.edu/434639/New_Data_on_the_Use_of_the_Sling_as_a_Warlike_Weapon_in_Thrace_4th-1st_century_BC_

And this attributes a lead bullet to Tissaphernes: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/630867?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103007387887

The Marathon bullets are utterly unreliable-- all are claims of antiquities dealers in the C19th (already critiqued by the Swiss scholar Visscher, I think).

Tissaphernes: yes, that's after 401 BC (he's the guy who fought the Greeks after Kounaxa. That's the argument of the guy who published the first known Tissaphernes bullet, Clive Foss, in JHS 1975. Two more Tissaphernes bullets have appeared on the antiquities market recently).

The "Marathon bullets" are more likely to be Hellenistic in date, probably Chremonidean War (260s BC), when a large Ptolemaic camp in Attica introduced a lot of these things into Attica (notably Ilioupolis). At least, that's a good context, known archaeologically.

Another illustration of why unprovenanced antiquities scramble, rather than contribute to, our knowledge of ancient history.

Just to make the argument a bit clearer: Tissaphernes is the satrap, in office in the late C5th in Ionia (411 BCE), displaced in 407 BCE, returned to office in the last years, then executed in 395 BCE. Now when fighting against the Greeks in Babylonia, the Persian troops didn't have sling bullets in 401 BCE. But there are sling bullets with Tissaphernes' name. So, perhaps, he learned the idea in 401 BC and applied it to his troops in W. Asia Minor after that. Of course, maybe Greek troops in Persian employ in Ionia say in 411 BCE did know how to sling lead.

The point still remains: not clear when sling bullets in lead start to be used, probably very end of the C5th

There is a case of a sling bullet which the archaeological context would place in the early C5th. However, the inscription (NAMER), probably a guy's name, is matched on other sling bullets from the 340s BCE. So either there was a guy with the same name 150 years earlier, or that particular sling bullet (from Potidaia in the Chalkidike) is an intrusion in the stratigraphy.

really appreciate the input here folks! Am tempted to go the full hog and give it a go myself. I live on the South Downs (Sussex, England) so have plenty of space to practice.

thanks again!

That's the spirit !

Do you have good slinging stones on your beaches, or is it all chalk ?

If you really want to go whole hog, you will need to start with a solid leather pouch of the style prominently displayed on the coins from that period.  I don't believe anyone has actually tested that style of pouch, so you will be doing a little bit of experimental archy work in the process.

As far as training, start fairly close, 5-8 paces or so, use tennis balls, (it's much safer for you and the surroundings) and as you get better, back up a pace or two until you can hit regularly, repeat.

You have no real reason not to try it at least once, just for research. Start up cost is practically nil and some designs for making slings are so simple that anyone could make them. As much as we can help you, it's no substitute for actually feeling what your character will.

I'd say go on the beach and let fly (as long as there is NOBODY AROUND within 100m in all directions)