Plumbata - Roman war darts

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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.
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Channel: Tod's Workshop
Views: 422,720
Rating: 4.9228687 out of 5
Keywords: Medieval, Tod's Workshop, History, plumbata, kestros, tod todeschini, todcutler, roman, legionary, pilum
Id: EfgMfSZiQSU
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Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)
Published: Tue Nov 03 2020
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