The Greek Gastraphetes

The gastraphetes (English translation: "belly-bow") was a hand-held crossbow used by the Ancient Greeks.It was described in the first century AD by the Greek author Hero of Alexandria in his work Belopoeica, which draws on an earlier account of the famous Greek engineer Ctesibius (fl. 285222 BC). Heron identifies the gastraphetes as the forerunner of the later catapult, which places its invention some unknown time prior to 420 BC.

Unlike later Roman and medieval crossbows, spanning the weapon was not done by pulling up the string, but by pushing down an elaborate slider mechanism.

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Education

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• Gastraphetes
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• Crossbow
• Ancient
• Artillery

[HepheistoBD]

ancient weapons expert ... one of the best jobs ever?

[TheWhoaDude]

Blueprints? I got some neighbor kids that won't stay out of my yard. ;)

[joec123able]

Damn nice penetration tht now mustve been quite powerful

[MrLantean]

@deathbyazure There is an episode of the series Weapon Masters where he asked his co-host Chad Houseknecht to improve the repeating crossbow. While Chad is brainstorm for the design of his repeating crossbow, Mike Loades explains the history of Chinese crossbows and its difference with its European counterpart. It is an interesting program where Chad manages to create an improved version of the repeating crossbow.

[deathbyazure]

@MrLantean That sounds very impressive. Now I'm interested in reading about them, since I have to admit I'm mostly ignorant about the construction and variety of Chinese crossbows. By the way, I am a great fan of Mike Loades. Did he make a television demonstration of Chinese crossbows, or something like that?

[MrLantean]

@deathbyazure Chinese also had single shot crossbows and are more powerful than European ones. Weapon expert Mike Loades explained that the prod of the European crossbow is so short that its fulldraw is located barely halfway of the wooden stock. It is very effective at short range. The fulldraw of the Chinese crossbow is located at the end the wooden stock like an archer on fulldraw. The bolt is able to hit its target futher and had deeper penetration than its European counterpart.

[MrLantean]

@deathbyazure The repeating crossbow is uniquely a Chinese invention and no other cultures had developed their own version. The problem is that people thought that the Chinese only had repeating crossbows unlike the single shot crossbows of the Europeans. But the Chinese had crossbows 1000 years before they appeared in Europe. From the tomb of China's First Emperor, archeologists had discovered hundreds of bronze crossbow trigger mechanisms.

[deejayy2k]

i love the what the ..... did for us series, there was quite a few think it started with stewards then victorians and also another, then this one which slightly changed format as it had other presenters.

[jgn69]

i have build a gastraphetes really nice weapon and fun to shoot

watch it on my channel

[deathbyazure]

I think this Chinese versus Greek versus Medieval debate is getting kind of mean and non-constructive.It seems to me like a simple trade-off between power and rate of fire. Repeating crossbows have to have a relatively light draw weight (and power) in order to fire faster, and a high draw weight Western crossbow such as an arbelest is a slow-firing high-power weapon. Because of this, the tactics used to employ them were totally different. I suggest there's no such thing as a perfect crossbow.

[DragonOfQin]

@loadedClownZ You said ancient Chinese crossbows didnt work because Chinese cant see. I replied Chinese didnt need to see becuz their crossbow bolts had heat sensors. You talked about how Chinese cant see which would have made their crossbows obsolete.

[loadedClownZ]

@DragonOfQin i'm talking about the ancient chinese crossbows