But it is a belly release, because you release it from the belly.
Well I think I'm just gonna go get that. Completely went over the top.
Hi it's Tod at Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm back with the gastraphetes
and what i love about this is it is the world's first weapon, that the heavier you are,
the fatter you are, the easier it is to use. In this modern world that's got to be a good thing,
but it's actually Ancient Greek. This is pretty much as far as we know,
the first crossbow that was ever there, just about everything about this thing we simply don't know,
so I'm going to tell you my understandings, my guesses. I'm going to give you a bit of a tour
of this thing, but first of all we're going to go shoot it and we'll see what it's about.
Down in the range now with the gastraphetes and what we're going to do is a few shots so you can
see how the system operates and then we'll talk about it, but before we do that because the whole
thing is a little bit weird, I'm going to explain roughly what you're going to be seeing. This is
clearly a predecessor of Ancient Greek and then Roman artillery, that you have a slider here,
then you have these teeth down the side here that catch the system
and then the two pawls, so the whole slider is in the middle. That goes backwards and forwards,
you've got the trigger system here with the pawls here and the teeth on the side
so what you do first of all is you lift those out the way and then the slider comes forward.
Put your fingers on the teeth there, that goes in, trigger bar comes underneath. Now
that is all locked in place you can see that the two pawls come down ready to engage on that
and then really very simply and this is why it is good for heavy people, what you do,
pop it on the ground, I've got a board here because I don't want to mark it, you push down
up and you're ready to shoot and the heavier you are, the heavier bow you can load,
but it is a 'belly release' because you release it from the belly.....
We think. Just going to go get that. Completely went over the top.
I'll go again shooting a bit lower this time, so pawls out the way,
slider forward, finger on it, trigger bar in, so it's a little bit of a pfaff. Push down.
Now you can tell from this it is without a doubt slower than a regular bow is going to be, but
it does allow you all the advantages the crossbow has, that you can stay already primed
that's always a good one, ready for that immediate shot when it shows itself and also the advantage
of untrained levies. Well as you can see it wasn't particularly difficult for me to learn how
to handle this thing, once you get the knack of this trigger system with all the setting and the
unsetting things, you know it's not too difficult to use. Accuracy maybe not great because it is
'belly released', it is shooting from the hip quite literally, it is not this and we know that,
we know that because of the name, but you know shooting for distance, lobbing it out there
anyone can do it and you don't have to be strong, you don't have to be able to load this thing. What
I'll do on this first trial now is just try and do it for speed with these three shots so here we go.
It's taking a little time to aim because I don't want to lose it over the top.
Right and there we go the distance is 15 meters and that looks to me to be around
about 25 centimeters/10 inches, something like that, so not so bad. Now one thing to
consider about myself versus levies that this would have been given to back in the day,
is how different am I? How different is my skill, my ability? Well I shoot, I shoot crossbows,
I shoot longbows, I've shot this a little bit, but not a lot. They of course wouldn't have shot
this at all, but they shoot bows a lot more than I would shoot bows, it's part of daily life back
then in a way that it just isn't now, so to say that they're unskilled with bows will be
completely wrong, you would expect some level of ability out of this, even shooting from the hip,
so I don't think I'm going to be massively different to them possibly even disadvantaged
let's give it a go and this time I'm going to really concentrate on trying to get for accuracy
this is only 15 meters but I don't want to lose the bolts, but let's see how we go.
This is strange, I've adopted a rather odd shooting style with this. I don't
know why that should be, but anyway here we are.
Well here we are with the three that I shot for accuracy. Now the windage, the side to side is
really good on these actually, the elevation not quite so good. I would have loved that one to be
down here, it wasn't but that's what? Fourth, fifth time that I've shot that thing, I don't
know, I'm not experienced in it and I'm doing okay. 15 meters, so a torso, a man's torso would
be in big trouble at 25 meters, with practice maybe 40, even 50 meters, an individual soldier,
not a body of men, an individual soldier would be in trouble facing somebody shooting like myself.
Now my gut reaction was that shooting from the hip would be pretty much a waste of time,
but I think that just very simple empirical experiment there shows that really it's not
a waste of time, yeah it's a really weird way to hold a bow, I get it you know, and surely
they could have put a shoulder stock on it and all that, but these ideas came later. It works,
clearly it works. The thing about the gastraphetes is there is so much we don't know and only a tiny
little bit that we do know. So there was an engineer called Hero of Alexandria, died 70 AD,
also invented the vending machine which I think is fantastic, but he did a sketch of it you can
see it here, pretty much gobbledygook and a description that went with it, but that aside
don't forget this is a machine that was much much older than him, so at least 400 BC and
quite possibly a lot older than that. We don't know when it was first invented, how it was used,
some people there's a guy called, was a guy called Marsden who did an awful lot of work on Roman and
Greek artillery, real name in the subject, he thinks it was probably stand mounted,
more modern interpretations seem to think that it was handheld which is the way that I've got it. We
don't really know, but you can tell that it really is a predecessor of the Roman and Greek artillery,
it's definitely of that family, but then you come to the name belly release
now the only interpretation I can come to and the layout of the machine as you can see it, is that
it is from shooting at the hip as I have shown you. Now one of the questions that will come up
in comments is can I shoot it from the shoulder, so you know let's try that. Okay, oh, uh,
awkward I think is... yeah... Actually you know what, I'm not even going to try because
I'm a bit worried about losing the bolt. I don't want to do that but what I will do, because I've
adopted this really strange sort of almost like an archery pose or shooting gun pose, it just feels
natural for me, but you know, perhaps you actually turn full on target and you shoot it like that.
Nearly over, that was fine. I don't know, I don't suppose it really matters very much,
but I can tell you that shooting from the shoulder with this layout would be really,
really quite horrible, but it is a beautifully easy bow to shoot and this
is knocking on around about 80 pound in draw weight something like that is what we got here
and it's pretty pretty effortless. So you know was it a good invention? Yes. Was it ever
really used that much? Who knows, we just will never know. So the bow first of all
on here is actually a modern fiberglass one that I've dressed and painted to look like
a composite bow from the time, now this would have been a horn and sinew back in the day
not fiberglass and that's why I'm not bothering with any speed tests on this, speed of the arrow,
there's just no point. You know, I'm going to give you a number that's not relevant to anything,
the rest of it, well there's so little we know from that sketch that it might be right, it might
be completely wrong but you know this is where we are, this is sort of the established layout
of them. Because this looks a lot like a crossbow, at least superficially so you'd think that there
would be some crossover in how the two were used and I think there probably is in some ways, but
in others not so. One of the great advantages with the crossbow is that you can shoot it from cover,
you don't have to stand out like you do with a long bow, now this one because you shoot it from
the hip, actually you can't really shoot it below, from behind cover unless it's you know, below the
knee pretty much, so that advantage is gone and you're just back like another bowman and I think
truth be told, if you're an experienced hunter or experienced archer you would probably prefer
a hand bow to this. But the other thing about this is it's just like a crossbow in that you can
have it locked and loaded and ready to shoot at a moment's notice that you can't do with a longbow,
so for that sort of sniping of an individual, seeing the leader of a phalanx over there and you
think "I'm going to go for him", this is perfect for that and at 50,60 meters he's going to be
in danger and even at 80 or 90 perhaps if there's four or five of you with these things ready to go,
the guy is in really quite deep trouble indeed, even though the accuracy is not brilliant,
and that comes back to the accuracy side of it, that sniping is going to be difficult.
Shooting from the hip, now you might think Ancient Greeks, pretty smart bunch, they invented this for
one thing and vending machines, that they would have worked out a shoulder stock, but don't forget
Europeans didn't use them really until about 1500AD really and so the whole concept of a
shoulder stock being very useful for accuracy is 2,000 years later than the invention of this, so
don't beat the Ancient Greeks up for being fools and not working it out and shooting from the hip,
you know they did a pretty good job of inventing a lot of other things other than the shoulder stock
and this is not by any means a waste of time as a weapon without the shoulder stock.
Would it have been better? Undoubtedly, but it is what it is. Anyway thank you very much;
little tour of the gastraphetes and I hope you've enjoyed it. Thank you