Hi it's Tod at Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler
here and today we're going to talk about plumbata; these things. What the heck are
plumbata? Well they are war darts. Basically I mean look at these little bits of
nastiness. So you've got a barbed head there, you've got a shaft, you can see a sense of
scale there off my hand, and then a lead weight and then ending up with a feather shaft there.
These things weigh in at around 210 grams each so they're fairly chunky. What are they? Well
they go back to Greek times at least 150 BC. If you look at Wikipedia, I'm not sure on the
truth of that, goes back to about 500 BC, but the Romans certainly liked them as well and they
were using them sort of 250-300 AD and so on. What I will say right at the beginning here, is that
Roman and Greek history is not my core area, so I know a bit about these, but more to the point I've
been fascinated by them for about 20 odd years, but I don't know that much. There's a great
site called acroballistics, I'll put a link into the notes and you can go find his stuff
there; he's gone back to the original sources translating the Greek, into finding out what
these things were and descriptions of them, so fantastic bit of work he's done there.
Plumbata are undoubtedly nasty little things, they were nicknamed by the Roman soldiers "little
barbs of Mars", Mars being the god of war, barbs being of course those, and one of the
things we need to test with these plumbata is what they do against flesh.
That's going to be critical because you know you don't want it in you, I get
that, but how much do you not want it in you? There's a big difference between a barbed head
and just a simple point like you get on a plum. Neither is good, one is definitely worse
than the other. So to find that out, I've got a couple of pork joints here that i'm
going to spend probably quite a long time trying to throw these at until I hit them, but what
we can do is just a very simple test. I'm just going to drop the plumbata now from a meter, a
meter height, so this is just gravity, 210 grams, sharp head, not razor sharp, but sharp. Let's see
what happens that's about the right height.... That is like properly in. We'll have a
look at that in a moment. Let's just go for another one so that's just down
that's a just under my eye height... Oh let's have a look at this. Ouch
and there you can see we're in. I'm going to pull this one out now and
show you how nasty these barbs really are. There we are. That is how far it went in, dropped
from a mere metre in height. Let's go out on the field now and we'll throw them around a little bit
and get some sort of an idea for the range of them and whether you can throw them over hand, whether
you throw them underhand and just get a bit of a feel for what the heck these things are. Down
at the range. Now to start some throwing trials, but before I begin, if you want to support
this channel T-shirts are a great way to go. "Night Vision" is a new one for us, hot off
the press, this is the only one in existence, so why don't you make yourself the second
one? I'm gonna start throwing these now; consensus is that they're thrown underhand
like that and that's certainly easy, I'm going to try it throwing like a dart, I'm
going to throw it over hand as well just see what it does and just commentate. All of
the cameras are very wide on this really, I don't know how much you can see but I will
commentate and let you know. So the camera is out there now, 27 meters so round about 30
yards let's see how we do with an overhand..... Nice. oh dear me Pretty ugly really. They spin,
they caught through in the air they're not good, I've got their what's that 25 26
meters? So the distance is fine. I wouldn't want to be on the other end of it they're not nice.
Clean arrow straight throws which is what you would want. I'm going to throw them over hand now
like you would with a modern dart, but of course typically like a pilum or a spear or a javelin,
so I'm just going to try them overhand now.... okay I'm going to go measure the distance
and then I'm going to comment. I managed to get myself a very unimpressive
18 meters but I'm not a spear thrower, I'm not a trained legionary okay? They will get
a lot better than that but we can compare that with my untrained "I'm not a legionary" underhand
throw and get an idea for the difference, the the proportionate difference, because if the underhand
throw goes further than my overhand throw then we know that the legionaries would have
had the same result as well, so that would mean underhand would be the way to go, so let's
just have a look at the underhand version. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I'm just going to give
this a third... Well on the basis that I believe I have just hit my other camera straight in the
lens. Uh any camera manufacturers out there; sponsorship would be nice! I can tell you now that
that has gone 28 meters, let's go have a look. Here is the culprit, oh I can see where
it struck it, and there we have it. Oh well rather annoyingly that
just took out my field camera hopefully the footage is good, but the
throws I did were sort of quite low like that sort of trajectory. I'm now going to go
for a really high lob, the distance is going to be shorter but obviously the height is a
lot more. We saw what it did at one meter, so you know this really should go pretty
nastily into the ground. We'll have a look. oops What's really interesting about this is of course
it takes practice like anything else, but the first lob I did there was about 20 meters but it
did do a nice high arc exactly what I wanted it to do, but the second two actually I fluffed up
a bit, much lower, but I tested myself the other day, I was getting 24/25 meters, that's why I
put my camera out at 28 thinking it was safe, but these ones I've just cleared
the 30 meter mark with the last two sort of more or less accidentally, so very, very
little practice and I'm already really getting the numbers quite up there. In a very non-scientific
way these are going up to the lead weight, in a you know a hard mown lawn, so I don't
know what that means, but it does mean that they're going in some, so I'm just going to
try for another lob. I've moved the camera.... Oh dear Yeah I mean it's definitely practice, the first
two were nice and high, third one flat again, but you know it's learning. One of the things I
have been curious about is how fast you can throw them. These are for the last few seconds, last
two, three seconds before two lines of soldiers clash. They're just to get everybody to get their
heads down, to put their heads behind the shields, to stop watching what's going on, so actually
accuracy is not so important. You just want to fill the air with nasty junk, so I'm just
going to do a quick speed trial and just see how quickly I can get things out. We'll
put a clock on screen, three two one.... And there we go all out at about the 25 meter
mark thereabouts, I'm about six or seven meters away from my pork joint there and it's backed
up by 12 millimeter/half inch osb. It's like a cheap construction grade plywood, it's not
as good as plywood, I'm not saying it is, but we use it for building houses. Let's see what
it does it's going to be interesting, because I don't think these things are really meant for
accuracy and the pork joint is about the size of somebody's face so it's going to be tricky but
you know a few attempts let's see what happens. Right my conclusion to date
here is that for accuracy underhand is not working for
me, I'm going to try overhand. Didn't get it but much better... Ah at last! Took me a while
to get there with my throwing, but this was a six/seven meters range
whatever it was, and it is in right up to the weight, so that is how far it
went into somebody's leg. That's nasty. I've got a board out of the 20 meter mark,
let's just see if I can get them to stick in. These three have obviously gone into the board,
nice grouping, let's not talk about the other two.... about a centimeter sticking out the
back. What they're not going to do is punch right through shields like a scutum or something like
that, it's not going to happen, so they really are against flesh, they're not against any kind
of armour, really they're just not going to do anything. Accuracy you throw it overhand, distance
you throw it underhand, if you want to lob it high, again you throw it underhand, but there
is skill involved in it. It's not just a case of grabbing it and letting go, there is a smoothness
required to get these things to not corkscrew through through the air, because that's what
otherwise happens. You want a nice smooth release, so that they you know the energy goes into making
them go forward, not scrubbing off with drag. Overhand I managed to get 18 meters on day
one, underhand I got 32 in the end, so I think that with a little bit of practice I could
probably get 40/42 meters out of it, but don't take that as read that that's what warriors,
Roman legionaries, Greeks would have done, I am not a trained warrior, I have not been trained
in the use of these things and of course they will throw it further. They will throw it with more
accuracy and they will make more of a menace with them than I ever can, this is just me messing
about, but it's indicative of what was going on. The pork joint up at close distance that went
right all the way up to the lead, four and a half inches/11 cm something like that, straight
into a muscle, going into the side of a muscle, that is going to ruin your day and that's what
these things are about. They're not about armour, we could see that it didn't penetrate the board
even at 20 meters, they weren't penetrating the board close up, I wasn't giving it quite so
much force with my swing because I was going for accuracy, more further out at 20 meters,
I could give it some real force with the throw and they did go in a bit deeper, but they're not
going to be punching through shields, they're not going to be punching through armour. These are
against flesh and the whole point of these things is to break up the opposition that you are just
about to charge into and to harry them and to annoy them and the thing is, if these things are
coming at your face, which is unarmored in those days for sure, if these things are coming to
your face, you are not going to want to expose your face, you're going to cover it, if you
cover your face, you can't see what's going on, if you can't see what's going on, you're already
in trouble and that's what these are about, is to annoy the hell out of the opposition.
Probably won't kill them, but really really will mess them up and give them the fear of.....Mars
I suppose. It'll put the fear of Mars into them which is what they're all about. So thank you
very much. Adventures in plumbata. Thank you.
