160
Specialized arrowheads for carrying incendiary material, Roman Empire, 1st-2nd century AD?
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
160 points (99.4% liked)
Historical Artifacts
1361 readers
120 users here now
Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!
Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
Generally speaking, ruins should go to !historyruins@lemmy.world
Illustrations of the past should go to !historyillustrations@lemmy.world
Photos of the past should go to !HistoryPorn@lemmy.world
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lindybeige told me this was fake, though
Don't know who that is, but looks like a history youtuber.
While incendiaries were not used at every possible opportunity, as movies and games sometimes portray, fire has a long history of military usage, including specialized means for delivery. Julius Caesar, of dictator and conqueror fame, once used heated sling bullets to set thatched roofs on fire; Spanish guerillas against Roman occupation were known to use metal javelins wrapped in flammable materials, and so on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTd_0FRAwOQ
In fairness, he seems to base it purely on himself saying "it's a stupid idea" and not on any historical research that he cites explicitly.
I hate watching videos, but the first few seconds show movies where fire arrows are being launched at troops, which was rare (though not completely unheard of as a terror tactic). Generally, incendiary projectiles were used for purposes wherein fire would be, uh, useful, like setting fire to buildings, camps, supplies, ships, siege weapons, or flammable environs.
Yeah. Technically he qualified it by saying he didn't think they were used "in open battle," and his reasons were probably accurate, but yes he's missing a whole category of use for which they probably were super useful.
Love this videos but somethings I just plain disagree with. Horses, in war, a dumb idea? I just feel like he's personally not got the best relationship with the species.
When did he say horses in war were dumb? Yeah, that's wrong.
Cavalry was a stupid idea
It might be he's arguing specifically against cavalry though, not horses, but I remember thinking he just sounds like he's not comfortable on horses.
Which I find odd, as he loves dancing and I feel those two are pretty similar.
A horse-drawn cart is very awkward indeed in comparison to how nimble a good rider on a horse can be. I don't remember the content of the video and am not listening to it rn
Yeah... I think this is just wrong. It think you're right that he is just making a big authoritative sounding thing based on his personal experience on horses and guessing and extrapolation and some light confirmation-bias research.
IDK, I thought this guy was legit, but maybe not.
I mean, he's "legit" in my opinion, but no-one is right all the time.
"Cavalry was a stupid idea" is a pretty big thing to be wrong about, though. Like talking about physics and asserting gravity is a myth and if you close your eyes and believe, you can free yourself from its tyranny and float. Even if they were correct in 100% of whatever else they said on physics, it's going to be hard to believe them from that point on.
Yeah. The biggest empire of the ancient world was built on basically a 100% horse archer military and they didn't seem to have too much of a problem.
I feel like it would be different if he was citing some kind of history "look at the composition of all these armies, cavalry's actually a really small part, look at these big battles where the horses were a liability and then they moved away from them after." That's history, whether or not it's right or wrong, it's based in fact. This whole thing sounds like "I ride horses and it's a mess, cavalry doesn't work, the end."
He also has a video titled "let the children smoke" and I completely agree with the video.
I haven't relistened to this now, but I'm pretty sure he's not just plain out asserting it's bullshit, just like he's not actually pro-children smoking tobacco.
Oh Lord.
Lindybeige is a self proclaimed expert who just calls things as he sees it. He's no researcher, he's no craftsman. Your better of watching Todd from Todd's workshop, he does actual experiments with medieval weaponry.
But lb is just a blabbering buffoon with an British exceptionalist worldview who loves the aroma of his own petards.
Yeah. I just removed him from !nerd_streams@ibbit.at. If you're going to be a nerd, you need to know what you're talking about.
Ty!
The way they're often used in movies by firing basic flaming arrows into groups of soldiers is often not accurate(although there are records of East Asian troops using gunpowder based rocket arrows against soldiers).
However, flaming arrows have been historically used in sieges for a long time. We have records going back 2700 years of arrows having something tied around the tip that was soaked in oil and lit on fire. Just look at the posted picture, those are real "cage" style flaming arrows
We even have actual examples of arrows from the 1400s with a saltpeter compound on it that burns under water.
Haven't watched the video from Lindybeige; but, here's a rather good video on what incendiary arrows (like the ones pictured) would have been like. We have evidence of medieval (and earlier) use of incendiary devices in warfare (QED, the arrows pictured). Though, probably nothing like what is shown in movies.