MILITARY ENGINES. 109 



D. MILITARY ENGINES IN GENERAL. PROJECTILES. ' 



ANTiaUITY. 



Before gunpowder was invented, and the enormous force with which it 

 projects a missile was known, no other power was available, of course, for 

 war machines, than that produced by the immediate application of hunfan 

 strength, increased in some cases by the intervention of mechanical aids. 

 These mechanical aids were chiefly the power of the lever and of the 

 spring. In the war engines of antiquity we have to do with these alone. 



The implements of which the ancients made use in war and in sieges 

 may be most simply divided into : «, darting and slinging engines ; b, bat- 

 tering engines ; c, machines for transport ; and d, implements for defence. 



a. Projectile Engines. To these belong catapults and ballistcB, which 

 with the ancients took the place of artillery. They are divided into those 

 where the power of the spring and those where the power of the lever was 

 used. The first, the catapults, took the place of our cannon ; they served 

 to project arrows or balls in a direct line or with 'slight elevation ; the 

 latter, with which stones and fragments of rock were projected in lofty 

 curves, took the place of our mortars, and were called ballistse. The later 

 Roman authors have constantly confounded these two names, have even 

 applied them both as synonymous with catapult, and given to the ballista 

 the name of onager. By the Greeks, however, the distinction has always 

 been strictly maintained. The smallest catapults were the scorpions. 

 There were field and siege engines, according to their use, the latter being 

 much the largest. 



The bows of the light-armed troops led to the construction of the cata- 

 pult, which was indeed nothing else than a bow on a very large scale. 

 The lightest kind of catapult was the hand catapult, the scorpion (pi. 33, 

 Jig. 3), a bow upon a light stand, which could be aimed high or low, and 

 which was drawn at first wnth the hand, afterwards with a winch, as the 

 string tightened, until it came to the trigger. The field catapult, somewhat 

 larger, was laid upon a trestle (fig. 1). The bow was longer and heavier, 

 and the string was stretched by the application of a double lever, which 

 had the form of a X. The long arm of this lever rested against a fixed 

 point, and the shorter pressed the string back to the trigger, when the long 

 arm was depressed. Another species of field catapult, which, however, 

 drove its arrow only a short distance (fig. 2), has no bow, but the arrow is 

 projected by the strong blow of a striking lever, which lies obliquely at the 

 hinder end of the catapult. Siege catapults were designed either to dis- 

 charge many arrows at once during an assault (fig. 4), or to drive great jave- 

 lins and beams to a considerable distance. The first consisted of an upright 

 plank, with cross cuts, in which feathered arrows were laid, their points 

 resting upon movable supports at a greater or less elevation, as desired. 

 An elastic board, fastened below, and drawn back by means af a rope at 

 the top, struck, when let loose, against the arrows, and drove them forth. 



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