What did the Dacian/Transylvanian bows look like?

[ginni]

moldavian archer, sec XVI church

[ginni]

some pics from Traian columna

[Stephen Selby]

For the 'Moldavian Archer', I wonder whether there's some effort gone into showing a tri-lobe arrow, or perhaps it's just a mark on the painting...

[MJuingong]

On that colored combat painting, is that an attempt to depict a thumb draw?

Are those representations on the Column of Trajan to be taken as accurate as regards bows?

[Bede]

If you want to see a discussion of Roman archery equipment see J C N Coulston's work. Coulston and Bishop discuss the reliability of Roman artistic depictions of weapons in some details and explain some of the conventions like making them smaller in proportion to the soldiers than in real life.

[Orda Khan]

Again, painting sources can only give some idea as to weaponry because artists of all ages apply their artistic licence. As an artist myself, I could paint a battle scene but I could not claim accuracy, especially if I had never seen my subject and/or was working from second hand knowledge as was often the case and very often, many years after the event. Further to this I would suspect there were variations of design amongst tribes let alone different cultures and of course we also have natural evolution over a large time frame.

[Russ Mitchell]

You are correct... but we shouldn't take this too far. My wife did her dissertation on 14th-century Italian wallpaintings, which are supposedly an example of "Orientalism...." and lo and behold, many of them show what are in fact very accurate portrayals of Cumans, down to the mulitple braids and the suggestions of excessive lust.

[TZH]

And did she find the pics about the paintings in Castello di Avio? (Ifound just infantry bowyers (cumans), not the mounted archers, I saw them just on TV. But I got a Lorenzetti fresco about franciscans (I'm sure that the nobleman on the throne is I. Louis of Hungary, and the other soldiers are hungarians and kumans.

TZH

[Russ Mitchell]

I don't remember all of the works, but if you can give me a reference, I can certainly check on it...

[fast_arrow]

Thus, Tucidide and Ovidius, observing that "riding they came", considered that, due to the fact that "the Getae used to ride" and they were "neighbors with the Scythians, have the same costumes and they both are riding archers" .
The bow as a weapon used in long-distance battles was handled with the same skill by the pedestrians as well as the horsemen, thus, Horatio's statement that the Getae "are more skilled than anyone in throwing arrows" was very real. The most numerous force used in the battle, was, for all that, the pedestrians: a fact proved by the report of 2,5/1 for the Getae pedestrians that oposed Alexander the Great in 335 B.C. The shock effect in a Dacian army was the heavy infantry of professional warriors where, according to Dio Chrysostomos only "those who will prove to be skilled archers", soldiers with heavy weapons "spear or stone throwers" could be accepted.


The riders of the treaty between Burebista and Pompeius are unknown to us, but what we do know is how, over 120 years before, the Macedonian king Perseus (179-168 B.C) bought for the final confrontation with the Romans, the Getae alliance: 1000 golden "stater"s offered to the king- 10 "stater" for each horseman and 5 for each pedestrian. In the harsh times, when an army was threatened to be outnumbered or surpassed in battle techniques, the "soldiers" would be joined in battle, by what will be called after a millennia "the great army" of the land. This is the army formed by all men capable of fighting of all communities, appointed by Tacit with a term that, as prove of continuity in the military native field , will appear with the same meaning in the official acts or the Romanian medieval chronicles : "the many".

From this I believe that shape of the bow (schytian style) and craftmanship was preserved in Dacia and not in any case was bring here by cumans, hungarians and other nomads riders that past here.

[Russ Mitchell]

It would be very odd if the Dacians/Moldavians/Vlachs stuck to a single design throughout hundreds of years of history, rather than adapting and learning from new designs as time went on as did everyone else.

[mongolianarcher]

I was curious about this page, and when I saw the first picture on this page, the picture of the Wallachian soldier inspecting an arrow, his bow is made in a very Crimean-looking double curve. The artist's detail is outstanding.

I should like to think that the latest historical style that we have available of Eastern European horse archery culture (and perhaps even Central Asian as well) might be the Crimean tatar bow that we like to imitate today. (Perhaps sometimes with string bridges, and sometimes without).
This design being the only other style still used until the time of guns, aside from the Ottoman bow, in this large tract of area. And it is even more ironic that this kind of bow outlasted the Ottoman bow's use in warfare.

[Uli]

I have a book suggestion

Spinei, Victor, 1943?

The Romanians and the Turkic nomads north of the Danube Delta from the tenth to the mid-thirteenth century
(East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450?1450 ; v. 6)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 978-90-04-17536-5

[mongolianarcher]

Thanks I shall give it a peek.