ANST - Nasty Ballista in A&S

[Scott White]

>how "period" was it to prettify ballistas and such? 

I've never seen any documentation that suggests that siege engines were
dolled up. 

That being said, we've got to remember that virtually ALL of our
reconstructions of trebuchets, for example, come from second- or third-hand
drawings of the machines -- no real machines have survived. Most books I've
seen concentrate on the mechanics of the machines to such a degree that
adornment could have been ignored.

My ballista provides plenty of big, flat spaces that beg for painting --
lettering, naming, 'nosecone' art, racking up kills (elephants) and such. I
can't prove that the ancients adorned their siege weapons, but I find it
hard to believe they did not. The likelihood would have been less for
mobile army engines and greater for those used to defend a stronghold, I'd
think.

Gnith
<swhite at cimedia.com>
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