Hi everyone, welcome to ancient warfare answers.

Another episode with me, Murray.

Oh, look, I changed my word there.

This is your weekly fix of ancient warfare related material.

And what I do here is I attempt to answer the questions of readers, listeners and viewers.

They send them in to me via email, postcard by commenting

on a previous video or podcast. I get them, I collate them all, and then I try and answer

them as best I can. You can back us on Patreon, three different levels, legionary, Optio and

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Now, today's question is from Ralph.

Thank you for your question, Ralph.

For Murray, he says, what was the least influential weapon on the ancient battlefield?

I suggest the Polybolus. Available to both successor Macedonian states in Rome, it could have replaced the Scorpio as a legion siege weapon. All right.

Okay, so the Polybolus, or the Polybolos, depending on the pronunciation, means multi-thrower

in Greek, was a repeating ballister designed by Dionysius of Alexandria in the third

century BC. He's a Greek engineer at the Rhodes Arsenal, not a crossboat because it uses a torsion

mechanism and it's drawing its power from the twisted sinew bundles of its string. And we get several descriptions of it. It doesn't

tend to do a great deal. Hence Ralph's chagrin and dismissal of it as the least influential

weapon on the battlefield. Now, I'm going to be

controversial, which is rare for me. I don't like being controversial. I'm going to say that I

think the least successful or the least influential weapon on the ancient battlefield is, in fact,

...