A vertical spoke that passed through a rope bundle fastened to the frame had a cup, bucket, or sling attached which contained a projectile.
The onager consisted of a large frame placed on the ground to whose front end a vertical frame of solid timber was rigidly fixed. Etymology Īccording to two authors of the later Roman Empire who wrote on military affairs, the onager derived its name from the kicking action of the machine that threw stones into the air, as did the hooves of the wild ass, the onager, which was native to the eastern part of the empire. The onager is often confused with the later mangonel, a "traction trebuchet" that replaced torsion powered siege engines in the 6th century CE. The onager was first mentioned in 353 AD by Ammianus Marcellinus, who described onagers as the same as a scorpion.
It is commonly depicted as a catapult with a bowl, bucket, or sling at the end of its throwing arm. ˈɑnədʒər/ ) was a Roman torsion powered siege engine. It is called a torsion engine because its whole power is derived from torsion, and scorpion because it has an upraised sting modern times have also applied the name of onager to it because wild asses, when hunted in the chase, throw up stones so high behind their backs by kicking that they penetrate the chests or their pursuers or actually break their bones and smash their skulls.The onager (British / ˈ ɒ n ə dʒ ə/, / ˈ ɒ n ə ɡ ə/, U.S. When it comes to combat, a round stone is put in the sling and four young stalwarts on each side, by pulling rearwards the bars to which the withdrawal ropes are connected, draw the arm down almost horizontal finally, when all this has been done, and only then, the master artilleryman, standing loftily beside it, strikes the pin, which secures the ropes of the whole machine, with a heavy hammer whereupon the arm, released by the sharp blow and meeting the softness of the sack, projects the stone which will smash whatever it hits. You see, if put on a stone wall, a mass of this sort smashes whatever it finds underneath because of the violent recoil, not its weight.
The engine is placed on piles of turf or brick platforms. A huge buffer is padded in front of the arm, a sack stuffed with fine chaff, secured by strong binding. Two beams of oak or holm-oak are fashioned and given a moderate curvature so that they seem to bulge into humps, and the beams are connected as in a frame saw, having quite large holes bored in each side between these beams, through the holes, powerful ropes are stretched, preventing the structure from falling apart.įrom the middle of the cords a wooden arm rises at an angle and, being set upright in the manner of a yoke-pole, is so inserted in the twists of sinew that it can be raised higher and lowered to its tip iron hooks are fastened, from hangs a sling of two or iron. The design of the scorpion, which they now call the onager, is as follows.
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