Got a new sling bullet in today's Ares auction; Listed as: lead roman sling bullet(war weapon) ,About fine to about very fine. Weight: 32,29 gr Diameter: 28,00 mm I think I'm seeing some lettering and might be making out an Eta Rho Omicron? Anyone know what it actually is and what this might translate to? I will always love Mary Beard for that episode she did where she had the sling bullet that said it was marked for Fulvia's (Marc Antony's wife) clitorus! Anyway, pretty excited about the new guyas my other sling bullet is without adornment: Please post your sling bullets, ideas on what my new guy says or anything you feel
LOL, I tried to enlarge the pics I had for my sling bullets, and well, they look like Asteroids... Roman Sling Stone 200 BCE - 400 CE Almond Shaped PB lead 37x14mm 41.2g Roman Sling Stone 200 BCE - 400 CE Almond Shaped PB lead 34x14mm 42.4g
Nice catch @Ryro .I was following live the end of the auction and I'm happy a member of CT was the lucky winner. Can't read the inscription, but surely you'll like this article : https://militaryhistoryblog.wordpre...f-inscribing-lead-sling-bullets-in-antiquity/
Congratulations, Ryro. I almost bid on that one as well, but decided to save my money til the next lot in that auction. Happy to see that it went to another CT member and I didn't end up driving up the price for you I wonder if the 'reverse' of your bullet could be a possibly be a scorpion? My bullet: And just in case you wondered what the next lot was, the one that I bid on... A little Roman sword pendant, 30,3 cm, 6,69 gr. that I got for about the same price as your bullet. Everybody happy
Perhaps my eyes betray me (you'll be in a better position to tell once you have it in hand), but could the last letter be an alpha (A) instead of omicron (O)? If so, that would be the Greek spelling of Hera: HPA. I could also imagine the reverse showing a Pegasus, but that has nothing to do with Hera.
Nice giant slayers @Alegandron! I KNEW that you would have at least a couple laying around...I wonder if they "did in" any barbaroids? And thanks @Ocatarinetabellatchitchix. That is a very insightful article with a great reminder, these were used to communicate different information. And, just like in the title of the article"Arial Insults" and as @furryfrog02 pointed out, the types of things we like to communicate on weapons hasn't changed too drastically over the couple millenia. @Ignoramus Maximus, hahaha! I almost bid on that wonderful pendant! So glad we both chose our separate pieces of the past and both won for what I feel was a steal! Unlike some of the other large auction houses, it seems that Ares had some really good under the radar deals. I am still kicking myself for not going hard on that Brutus quinarius Hopefully a CT pal won that one. I could see that as being an Alpha @SeptimusT Very interesting. I don't know if I have heard of gods or goddesses names on bullets. Now I cannot wait to get this in hand @Numisnewbiest I might be seeing an I (Iota) O (omicron) Y (Upsilon) but as you can tell, I am very bad with greek and going off a sheet of greek letters that I printed up a time ago. Hopefully more will chime in with their understanding of Greek...cause it's all something something to me
I didn't dig too deep, but I went a little down the rabbit hole and found that one of the earliest studies on inscribed bullets was an 1864 paper called, appropriately enough, "On Inscribed Sling-bullets," by a John McCaul. Obviously, there's much more recent and comprehensive studies out there, but he gives a nice summary of the general types of inscriptions. We tend to focus on funny ones or insults, but one of the main categories he notes is the names of deities: Abbreviations are common too, so HPA could also mean Heracles, or Herakleia, and so on. @Numisnewbiest, it also looks like there's an inscription on both sides of your bullet. Anyway, here's my perfectly ordinary Roman bullet; it's "said to be" found in Spain, but came to me via a Japanese collection:
ah, kool artifact Ryro.......i've read that they usually had insults inscribed on them for the the peeps they we're chucking them too...but who had time read them in the heat of the chucking?!?...
WAIT a minute, @Ryro ... How do we know that these sling bullets aren't actually COPROLITES!?!?!? Kinda adds meaning to "Feces-a-Flyin' !!! " Coprolite Beads! (Yum) I betcha this was a whistler!
BIG THANKS @SeptimusT for going down that rabbit hole! It sparked some ideas for me. Using the Greek alphabet and translate, here are some things that I think mine might be saying: HPA= Hera KPΩ= Crow ΗΡΩ= Hero ΗΡΟ= Hero And then though I want it to be a scorpion, I am pretty sure the image on the other side is a Thunderbolt! I think Hero or Hero make sense with the thunderbolt Sensational slinger @Andres2! You can actually tell that the rear of the slinger is his clothing. On mine it looks like he just has a really big posterior. Here he is: @Alegandron: Hopefully it was whistling through the air from a sling and not out some ancients @$$!
LOL, I THOUGHT of that, but I posted enough jibberish! LOL, think that it did! What projectile velocity!
Hello Tyler this Pius Larry (tyranus). You can email me at swfladinosaurs@aol.com. Then I can contact you as mentioned earlier. Just hope this message gets through to you.
