World History 2nd Quarter Project Paper Fitzpatrick 1

The Romans had multiple artillery weapons, a few examples might be the
Ballista, the Onager, and the Helepolis. The Romans usage of these weapons
varied, as with their usefulness. The Helepolis was extremely fawed, it was an 8-
9 story tower on wheels. On the frst story there is a huge cylinder with multiple
polls sticking out of it. On the remaining stories there are small wooden windows
with strings attached to it that allow for opening and closing, inside the windows
there are ballistas. The major faw is the speed, it is slow. This was an awesome
piece of machinery for their time. Another piece of artillery that I talked about was
the ballista, the ballista resembles a large crossbow. It has a large wooden frame
at the head of it, on the left and right there is rope wrapped around two discs.
Going through the rope above the discs there are wooden poles. When the poles
are turned the rope becomes more tense, once the rope has become extremely
tense, two planks of wood are slid into the rope. The ballista used in the Helepolis
fred rocks. When it fred rocks, there was also a sling attached in order to hold
the rocks in place until fring. There was also a rope attaching both planks of
wood, a crank, when turned, will add tension to the rope and when the rope is
placed onto a latch. When ready to fre the latch will be undone by pulling the pin
World History 2nd Quarter Project Paper Fitzpatrick 2
out of it. Anyway, inside of the Helepolis was the ballistas, as I just described and
the small windows would be opened or closed as needed for fring.
The Onager is the fnal piece of artillery Ill be mentioning, it was the
Roman armys catapult. Nicknamed Wild Ass for its recoil. The frame of the
Onager was a wooden rectangle, there was a half-square rising up with
something of a pillow tied to it to lighten the blow between the catapult arm and
the frame. The fring mechanic is basically the same as the ballista. A latch
attached to a rope, which, was attached to the frame. The latch was also
attached to the arm. When the pin was pulled the rock few.
The Romans had one main battle strategy when it came to forming their
army, this principle was numbers. Since all Romans had to serve in the army,
there were two ways to look at their army, the way the enemy saw it and the way
the Romans saw it. The way the enemy looked at it was that, because everyone
HAD to serve, their hearts were not in the battle it was just a requirement. They
also looked at it in the sense that the Romans could not focus on individual skills,
World History 2nd Quarter Project Paper Fitzpatrick 3
they were forced to train the masses. The Roman's point of view was a polar
opposite, as it should be. They looked at it with odds, if every enemy soldier was
challenged by two Roman soldiers, at least one Roman soldier would survive
most of the time, and, when the soldier went to help other soldiers fght, they're
odds increased.