430 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



Chinese a slight advantage over their wild, horse-riding, bow-shoot- 

 ing enemies on the north. 



There are also in existence numerous bronze trigger blocks from 

 crossbows of Han date (pi. 3). From these the exact mechanism for 

 cocking and firing the crossbow can be studied. Even the date of 

 manufacture is incised on some of these specimens : the earliest such 

 inscription of which I am aware was written in 65 B. C. Of course, 

 some of these inscriptions may be forgeries, but fortunately it is not 

 necessary to depend upon them for dating these bronze trigger 

 blocks. In northern Korea many graves of an old Chinese colony 

 have been scientifically excavated by Japanese archeologists, and in 

 one such tomb dated as 7 B. C. a bronze trigger block was discovered. 

 In another tomb, thought to date about 150 A. D., a complete cross- 

 bow was found, with bow, stock, and bronze trigger mechanism all 

 excellently preserved. 



Thus, there is abundant evidence for the crossbow in China dat- 

 ing in literature back to the third century and in actual remains 

 to the first century B. C. 



SIEGE ENGINES AND THE CROSSBOW IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD 



Probably the only other region where the crossbow was known 

 in comparatively early times was the Greco-Roman world. Did it 

 go from China to the Mediterranean, or was the invention diffused 

 in the other direction? This fascinating question is not easily an- 

 swered; some of the evidences for its early use in the classical world 

 are presented here without conclusions.^ 



There seem to be no archeological reports of the crossbow before 

 the fifth century A. D. from the ancient Mediterranean world — 

 that is, the region comprising Greece, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, 

 Carthage, and Italy. Literary records alone help in the problem 

 and they are far from decisive. They refer, for the greater part, 

 to missile-throwing siege engines, which were certainly not hand 

 weapons. These engines were the catapult and the ballista. Al- 

 though in some respects resembling the crossbow, they work on a 

 different principle, deriving their main power from torsion, not 

 tension. 



To get a picture of these engines, imagine looking into a long tim- 

 bered box without front or back, set up horizontally on a stand. 

 This box has three divisions made by two upright pillars, and 

 through the central section runs a long grooved stock set at an up- 

 ward slant. On the lower end of this stock are a string-catch and 



T The following notes are presented with deference because I am not conversant with 

 many of the problems of historical criticism surrounding Hellenistic and Roman texts. 



