The Gastraphete

The ancestor of the Crossbow

Origin: A portable ballista ?

The Gastraphete (lit. "belly releaser"), is generaly attributed to be the ancestor of the crossbow. This weapon was described apparently by Hiero (Heron) of Alexandria in the 1st Century AD in Belopoeica, his book on various tecnologies of the time and other matters. It attributes his drawing to a much more ancient source, the Greek engineer Cyesibius in 285-222 BC. He identifies it to the ancestor of the catapult ('Katapeltes'), placing it prior to around 420 BC. So in its basic principle, this weapon was perhaps at the origin of siege weapons as a whole. That's how important it was. The fact is was the ancestor of the Crossbow its still disputed among authors: Indeed, its mechanism was quite different than these weapons, which were simpler to built as they relied on simple torsion, not by using an elaborate mechanism. This is perhaps for the last reason that this weapons was thought perhaps impractical and dropped altogether... to make a reapparition in its semi-modern form in China, before being imported in eastern, and then western Europe, fiding its place on the late medieval battlefields.

In this new form, the crossbow had a crucial advantage: It required less skills than to built a bow, and moreover required practically no skills to master. The bow however could only be efficient if the archer had trained intensively since its young age, something which became mandatory in Great Britain during the hundred years war. This means that the crossbow could be manned by enroled peasant levies, procuring mass volleys of arrows at the enemy at shorter range than archers. But the grastraphete of the aniquity was a completely different beast, and both should be not related distinctly.


CATW's rendition of the Grastraphete

Siege warfare and the belly-bow

The context in which the belly bow was developed was the early Hellenistic era (or late Greek golden age). Around 400 BC, this was the Pelopponesian war, and Persian war era. Hoplitic warfare ruled the battlefield. Siege warfare was just started to mature, as war was still a bit conventional, with battles made in known spots between city-states concentrating mostly hoplites and few light troops or cavalry. The less "ritualized" Pelopponesian war raging from 431 to 404 was the first "total war", with actions on far away colonies and protectorates, naval battles and maritime blocus, commerce raiding, destruction or arable lands and pillage on a grand scale, and saw far more sieges as before (including the siege of Athens). As any and every assets were to be used to win, light infantry and mercenaries as well as cavalry started to create the first combined-arms tactics. Siege warfare was reinvented during that time. Apart Sparta, all city-states had walls.



But siege warfare was an art in itself, which evolved for millenias until Vauban and the gunpowder age. There were several ways to take a city: Climbing the walls was the simplest one. It was foolish to send troops of javelineers and archers or slingers in front of these walls in the attempt to clear off the defenders, far better protected. That's why any sensible general in the 4th century BC knew he needed an army at least four times the size of the defending army. Losses were tremendous. If a brute force assault failed, grappling hooks, rams, assault towers, ladders and assimilated contraptions all failed with heavy losses, the only solution was to just encircle the city and cut all its supplies, waitiing for the population to starve out. This could be problematic in several ways but it's not the subject here. What matter the average strategos was to "clean up" the walls of any defenders before attempting an assault. As said before, exposed skirmishers, even long-range like archers, were easy meat for the defender's own archers. Having no protection, while trying to hit an enemy higher up and protected by the fortification, was paid dearly.



How to send deadly projectiles at the enemy while keeping a dafe distance ? Given the benefit of high walls for the range of archers, muscle power alone was unable to provide a solution for a weapon as simple as a bow. However Greek engineers of the time which were interested in basic mechanics at some point discovered that torsion could be used, perhaps starting with modified slings using more flexible, elastic ropes. Animal sinews were found also to procure both the flexibility and ruggedness to contain a massive tension. A simple experiment, crossing together two of these, of even two ropes, in a plaid, released also a lot of energy, turning for example a stick at high speed. In any case, both the materials, the torsion, tension and liberation of energy as concepts were understood and their application to deliver a projectile made its way one day into an engineer in campaign during a siege. The basic idea of the katapeltes was born, and with it using mechanics to overpower the human muscle. This was the dawn of the industrial age.


Giant Oxybele used Demetrios Polorcete

From there it is not sure how it was translated, but the idea a belly-bow was the first contraption using this simple mechanics was born: A bow-like structure which could load tension up to a point, a way to create this tension, and a slider mecanism to hold and deliver the projectile, wether it was an arrow, a bolt or a stone. It is likely that te application of such principle was done first in a manageable form, in order to experiment the base principle and compare it with regular archery. Then it was gradually up-scaled, until reaching the ideal size of a portable gastraphete, and scaled up again, to the ballista and catapult, and refined into gargantuan machines in the late Hellenistic era; The Romans in turn adopted and perfect all of this, innovating in the late Empire with the repeating ballista (arcu-, manu- and cheiroballistae), as did the Chinese earlier with the repeating crossbow. Following this logic, the Gastraphete became indeed the ancestor of all force projection devices using mechanical power, up to gunpowder age, tension or counterweights, like for the late medieval Trebuchet.

Tactical use of the Gastraphete

The tactical use of the Gastraphete was simply to procure a way to deal with defending archers and other warriors on the wall at a safe distance. Safe enough for the user not to be hit by an arrow. Since no archer could do this, mechanical tension was called to the rescue. Fairly detailed in Heron's description, complete with its mechanical principle and drawing also shows a composite bow, cocked by resting the stomach of its user, using its concave shape for better effect, at the rear of the stock. The move was the same as a crossbowman, with some differences, but in the end, the way it was tended by usng the user's weight stored way more energy than using a single arm for the same result. This considerable energy was then released on a bolt, whhoch could have been a regular arrow, thanks to the dimension of the gastraphete, simplifying ordnance. Mass quantities of these could be produced on the field by the same artisans making arrows for archers already. But more importantly, the release of energy was capable of out-ranging by quite a margin the defenders. That way, a belly-bowman could aim at, and pick up any defender on the wall by staying at a safe distance, up to 250 meters after some estimations and tests. The average scythian archer could send an arrow up to 300 meters however (up to 365 m or 400 yards for the best mercenaries), so it's safe to assume the main advantage was also to shoot relatively straight, or the gastraphetai was protecting by a shield, weaker or else. Were are left only with hypothesis.







There are no proof of its use on the battlefield through pictures or archaeological finds though, ontrary for example to slingstones. But Heron's precise description allowed modern reconstructions. Some authors states its dimensions may have involved some kind of prop, and for some, required a base for mounting. In the Hellenistic period, it found its way in assault towers. Demetrios Poliorcete's (the 'city-taker') famous Helepolis, giant amoured assault tower, had no other role than to clean up the walls from a position higher than the defending wall, therefore its defenders were much more exposed. There was no point of having a ramp for troops to assault the walls: Its only purpose was to provide a heavy fire. Due to weight issues, the lower levels were probably housing large oxybeles (ancestors of ballistae), and it went up to the top, with lighter but faster firing gastraphetes, either larger than those manned and requiring more power or identical to those man-handled. It seems that the Oxybele was simpler and could have been delivered in single-user, smaller version and later refined by the Romans as ballistae, and into the Imperial crossbow. But in the end it's only assumptions. Oxybeles are mentions, as Katapeltes, but not belly-bows during siege description, perhaps because they were transitional weapons and did not have the power of fixed, larger equivalents. An oxybele could send a heavier projectile at 400 m, so almost twice the range of a gastraphete. But as said, the main advantage of a Gastraphete was its simple use, usable after a short training. It coould have been also used defensively, although reconstitutions shows the user tended to use it by securing the dtock to their belly, so nearly a "hip-held" weapon, and not like a rifle due to its weight. Aiming and accuracy was in that case fairly limited, and all these factors probably combined to doom it as a realistic, usable battlefield weapon.

According to a long dominant view expressed by E. W. Marsden, the gastraphetes was invented in 399 BC by a team of Greek craftsmen, under the patronage of the tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse. Rrecent scholarship however pointed out Diodorus Siculus actually never mention the "gastraphetes" per se, but referred instead to the invention of the "katapeltikon", a mechanical catapult firing arrows. Heron stated in Belopoeica mechanical artillery was inspired by the earlier gastraphetes, and that the invention crossbows and its adoption by Greek warfare wen back before 399 BC.



It could have been even dated from before 421 BC, since another Greek author, Biton (reevaluated reliability by modern scholars) credits two well adavnced gastraphetes models to a certain Zopyros. He probably was a Pythagorean engineer from southern Italy, and may have designed his stand-mounted bow-machines during the sieges of Cumae and Miletus so in 421 BC and 401 BC. Although the Gastraphete disappeared as not powerful enough as described above, it evolved with a different mechanism under the early Roman Imperial era and evovled into the Gallo-Roman crossbow. Besides the gastraphetes indeed, there were other mechanical hand-held weapons similar to the later crossbow and the terminology is still highly debated by modern scholars today. Greek and Roman authors like Vegetius repeatedly described contraptions such as the arcuballista and manuballista, both cheiroballistra (hand-held). Most scholars agree to the fact they were handheld, they disagree about their mechanical principle, flexion bows or torsion. The Roman commander Arrian precised in his "Tactica" Roman cavalry training a light handheld weapon from horseback. Sculptural reliefs in Roman Gaul also showed crossbows used for hunting, dated from the 1st–2nd century AD and similar to the medieval crossbow, notably by its inclusion of a nut lock, while their reflexible shape showed them as powerful composite bows.

About the Gastraphetai

The belly-bowman itself led to some hypothesis, about notably its equipment and social status. Contrary to slingers and archers or javelineers in general whih were recruited locally among peasants, sheherds and foresters, or mercenaries, the Gastraphetai seems to have been a professional. Indeed, the complexity of the weapon, not used in any other context than war, and its manufacturing called for a state own industry, under the patronage of a king, tyrant or strategos. The use of this weapon and its good maintenance also imposed training and some equipment, meansing their users were professionals. Either guards in defence or specialists in offense. They were probably nearly as costly as mercenaries, and recruited among those who later constituted crews for oxybeles and katapeltes in siege warfare. Their equipment would have reflected this, with some tooling and a bag to carry it and care for their weapon, a helmet to protect them, perhaps a pelte to protect their back; Dut to the dimensions of the belly bow it seems difficult to give these troops a shield, even a small one strapped on the forearm as it would have interfered with the good use of their weapon. The position, leaning down and make a flexion would have made any form of armour not practical. Perhaps this infantry was given a knife or short sword for close combat, but they were not supposed to come in close contact at any time, as artillery crews.

Sources/Read More

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