I intend to write three articles about weapons and weaponry, as they impact Captured in Amber. This first post is a description of the armaments common in the Roman Army.
The Roman infantry used two main types of swords throughout their history: the short-range gladius (60-68 cm long) and the longer spatha (originally a 65-75 cm cavalry weapon, but adopted by infantry by the 3rd century), alongside a small sidearm dagger known as the pugio.
For longer distances, theyused the pilum (heavy javelin), plumbata (weighted dart), and slings, alongside mechanical artillery like the scorpio, ballista, and onager.
Pilum: A heavy iron-shanked javelin (about 2 meters long) designed to pierce enemy shields and bend on impact, rendering the shield useless. Effective range was roughly 15 to 20 meters.
Plumbata: Lead-weighted throwing darts carried clipped inside the soldier’s shield rim during the later empire, offering a longer and sharper punch than standard stones.
Slings and Bows: Auxiliary units and specialised troops utilised hand slings with lead bullets or stones, alongside composite bows for high-arcing, lethal skirmish fire at greater distances.
The Roman army did use individual handheld crossbows, known as the manuballista (hand-ballista) or cheiroballista, though they were highly specialised weapons rather than standard infantry gear.
Manuballista: This was a downsized, handheld version of the massive legionary ballista. Instead of wood, it utilised an advanced, all-metal frame to hold the torsion springs. The soldier used a mechanical spanning mechanism to pull back the drawstring.
Gastraphetes (‘Belly-Bow’): Inherited from ancient Greek designs, this was a larger, early crossbow variant. The user loaded it by resting the stock against their stomach and using their full body weight to press a slider forward until it latched.
Arcuballista: Emerging in the late Roman Empire (around the 3rd and 4th centuries AD), this weapon looked and functioned much closer to a classic medieval wooden crossbow.
While the technology existed, the Roman military chose not to arm every legionary with a crossbow. Infantry tactics relied on throwing a heavy javelin to break enemy shields, followed immediately by an aggressive, fast-paced shield-and-sword charge. A slow-loading crossbow did not fit this fast combat style.
Mechanical Artillery and Siege Machines
Scorpio: A precision, torsion-powered mechanical arrow-shooting engine or bolt-thrower operated by twisted sinew, capable of targeting individual combatants up to 400 meters away.
Ballista: A larger torsion engine capable of firing heavy wooden bolts or stone spheres with devastating accuracy and force.
Onager: A single-armed catapult named after a wild donkey because of its heavy kick, used in sieges to launch large boulders or fire pots into enemy fortifications.
The effective combat range of Roman mechanical artillery typically spanned between 100 and 400 metres, though maximum limits could extend much further depending on the machine’s size and the target.
