Johnny
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Chris,
Let me know what you think about this.
Battle of Eknomos 311 B.C.
In the year 311 B.C., The Greeks under the generalship of Agathocles of Syracuse, was at war with Hamilcar of Carthage. At Eknomos, Sicily, the battle at one point was going badly for the Carthaginans until Hamilcar brought forth 1000 Baliaric slingers. Diodorus, the Sicilian-born historian writes:
“But when Hamilcar saw that his men were being overpowered and that the Greeks in constantly increasing number were making their way into the camp, he brought up his slingers, who came from the Baliaric Islands and numbered at least a thousand. By hurling a shower of great stones, they wounded many and even killed not a few of those who were attacking, and they shattered the defensive armour of most of them. For these men, who are accustomed to sling stones weighing a mina, contribute a great deal toward victory in battle, since from childhood they practise constantly with the sling. In this way they drove the Greeks from the camp and defeated them.”
The stones that the Balearics used weighed a mina, or around one and one forth pound, about the size of a man’s fist. The Balearics, unlike the Greeks, seem to have favored stones over lead bullets.
Balearic Slingers
Diodorus of Sicily writes:
“Their equipment for fighting consists of three slings, and of these they keep one around the head, another around the belly, and the third in the hands. In the business of war they hurl much larger stones than do any other slingers, and with such force that the missile seems to have been shot, as it were, from a catapult; consequently, in their assaults upon walled cities, they strike the defenders on the battlements and disable them, and in pitched battles they crush both shields and helmets and every kind of protective armour. And they are so accurate in their aim that in the majority of cases they never miss the target before them. The reason for this is the continual proctice which they get from childhood, in that their mothers compel them, while still young boys, to use the sling continually; for there is set up before them as a target a piece of bread fastened to a stake, and the novice is not permitted to eat until he has hit the bread, whereupon he takes it from his mother with her permission and devours it.”
Livy writes:
“There are two Balearic Islands, one larger and richer in arms and men. It has a harbour also, where Mago-and it was now the end of autumn-believed he could winter comfortably. But an attack was mage on the fleet, just as if the inhabitants of the island were Romans. The sling, now their most used weapon, was then their only one, and not a single man in any other tribe so excels in the art of using it as do all the Balearic islanders in comparison with other peoples. Accordingly such a volley of stones, like the densest hail, was rained upon the fleet now approaching land that, not venturing to enter the harbour, they headed their ships out to sea. Thereupon they crossed over to the smaller of the Balearic Islands, fertile in its land, not so strong in men and arms.”
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