Charles Ede Ltd (London), Antiquities 175 (2004) no. 110 (ill.).

2005.01

Three Roman Lead Sling-shots

Purchased. (a) 3 x 1.7 x 1cm; weight 26.5g. (b) 2.8 x 1.7 x 1.2cm; weight 24.5g. (c) 3.1 x 1.7 x 1.1cm; weight 30g.

They are of flattened ovoid form with pointed ends. They are well-preserved but for some slight corrosion of the surface. They carry no traces of inscriptions or other designs.

Perhaps first century BC – first century AD.

M.C. Bishop and J.C.N. Coulston, Roman Military Equipment from the Punic Wars to the Fall of Rome (second ed., Oxford 2006) is a good and reliable guide on these topics, with a well-researched bibliography. See in particular pp. 45, 58, 88-89, 134-135 and 206. For a more specialised and very useful account, see S.J. Greep, “Lead Sling-Shot from Windridge Farm, St Albans, and the Use of the Sling by the Roman Army in Britain”, Britannia 18, 1987, 183-200. Ours are rather smaller than the ones he discusses. More recently there is an article on slingshots and the issues involved in their study by T. Rihll, “Lead ‘Sling-Shot’ (Glandes)”, Journal of Roman Archaeology 22, 2009, 146-169, with a response by J. Ma, “A note on lead projectiles (glandes, molybdides) in support of sling bullets: a reply to T. Rihll”,Journal of Roman Archaeology 23:1, 2010, 427-8. For a more recent publication of slingshot from Adria in the northern Adriatic, see P.G. Sovernigo, “Le ghiande missili di Adria”, Quaderni Friulani di Archeologia 28, 2018, 97-106; it also has a good bibliography.

It is worth bearing in mind that slingshot have often been forged in the 19th and 20th cnturies: they are reasonably simple to fabricate, but of course for them to be attractive they were more often those with lettering: see for example F. Mainardis, “Tra storia, collezionismo e falsificazione: le ghiande missili dei Civici Musei di Trieste”, Acta XII Congressuis Internationalis Epigraphiae Graecae et Latinae (Barcelona 2007) 869-876.

In his popular treatment, A.K. Goldsworthy, The Complete Roman Army (London 2003) 180-1 includes a detail of two slingers from Trajan’s Column. They seem to carry rounded stones. Stones were one alternative, and so were clay shots. Stones were probably more visible when discharged, lead shots less so and they doubtless had more penetrative power. Their effective range has been calculated to have been about 200m and, at times, with practice, even further. There are also comments on their role in Goldsworthy’s The Roman Army at War, 100 BC - AD 200 (Oxford 1996).

The Romans used slingers (funditores) especially during the Late Republic and Early Principate. Lead sling-shot appears much less in contexts of the Antonine period, although it did not fall out of use completely, especially in the eastern part of the Empire.

On the Greek background, there are good observations by P. Hunt in: P. Sabin, H. van Wees and M. Whitby (eds), The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare, i (Cambridge 2007) 123-124, who, inter alia, notes Xenophon, Anabasis 3.3.16. See also W.K. Pritchett, The Greek State at War (Berkeley 1971-1991) v, 56. On shot in the Greek period there is a good article by M.-C. Hellmann, “Collection Froehner: balles de fronde grecques”, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 106, 1982, 75-87; also C. Brélaz and P. Ducrey, “Realites et images de la fronde en Grèce ancienne”, in: P. Sauzeau & T. Van Compernolle (eds.), Les armes dans l’Antiquité. De la technique à l’imaginaire (Montpellier 2007) 325-351.

More generally, M. Korfman, “The Sling as a Weapon”, Scientific American 229, 1973) 37.

Charles Ede Ltd (London), Antiquities 175 (2004) no. 110 (ill.).