Plumbata - Roman war darts 

1970's toy company executive: "I've got an idea, lets turn a Roman weapon of war into a fun lawn game!"

Being old enough to have played with lawn darts, I totally believe these are terrifying weapons of ancient warfare.

Cool video and beautiful weapons! One of these days I have to make a launcher for them maybe.

As a Dungeons and Dragons player, I've always wondered how "Darts" were used in medieval combat. In the past, I've always just went with the suspend your disbelief route and went with it. Now I can completely picture in my mind how it goes when using these implements of war.

In addition to adding weight, the lead prevents the dart from completely passing through the target. Meaning that to remove it, you *have* to pull it out the way it came. And while there were techniques for doing it without letting the barbs engage, it wasn't something you could do on a battlefield. So if you got stuck with one, it's in you, bouncing around until you stop moving.

I am not a historian, but I imagine these maybe an 'accuracy by volume' weapon. Fairly easy to make, give all of your legionnaires a handful and basic practice, then have them lob a volley an incoming enemies.

When we were 16 - 18 years old we used to throw around a toy called a nerf vortex at the school playing field. It is basically a cushioned throwing dart. We were commonly able to reach distances of about 50 meters and one guy was even able to throw them a whopping 60 meters. So to me it is absolutely clear that a throwing dart with a steel point thrown by someone who is strong and spends some time practicing is an absolutely fearsome weapon! Edit: This was only possible with overhand throws. Anything else just does not work.

Seeing "darts" in D&D weapons lists always felt kinda weird. But if this is what they're talking about, yeah... not wanting that coming at me!

About 10 years ago I watched a group of a dozen Roman reenactors at Arbeia Roman Fort (South Shields) demonstrating these thrown en masse. They threw them underarm up high into the air , and let them rain down on a target area marked on the grass about 3 m diameter, something like 20m away from their line. Result : roughly 50 plumbarta inside the circle in about 20 seconds.

you ever just have a long day, get to the corner shop and think "time to treat myself, gonna pick up a Mars Barb"?

Enjoyed the video. Reminds me of the lawn darts I played with as a kid

Me: "Hmm, it feels like these angles are rather restrictive, why do we not have a shot from the other side of the field?" Tod: "Oh Dear, Oh Dear, Oh Dear....I believe I've hit my camera..." Me: "Ohhhhhhhh"

To get greater range of the "plumbata" or "kestros" they also used the "Kestrosphendone" which is a type of sling specially designed for that dart.

Honestly all i see is the lawn darts i used to throw as a child. Just making a funny. Keep up the good work.

It’s pretty amazing how much your accuracy improved over a few hours. Imagine actually training as a profession, they much have been crazy good.

I'm not a historian but I can imagine using these while enemy shields are above their heads protecting them from an archery fire. Plumbata was probably very effective against unarmoured enemy and their horses. This is basically a short range arrow useful in woods where archery has no much of significance.

I liked using these things in early versions of D&D when I could talk my DM into letting me use them. It let my swordsmen have a ranged option without having to carry a golf bag sized quiver of javlins or have to fiddle with taking a shield off to mess with a bow.

That is a nice little terror weapon for the enemy. Along side the sling-shots, the javelins and the arrows, the battlefield must have felt like walking into a hail-storm.

As soon as the "It wasn't" showed on screen, I was dead. Man, one of those days. Sorry about your camera.

Hello Todd ! Just wanted to thank you for making these videos not only entertaining and instructive but also so accessible. I love your subject material and the down-to-earth way you treat them, but as a foreign guy who does not have English as a first language, the combination of (extremely) welcome subtitles checked by a human, and your clear and patient elocution really allow me to fully understand and enjoy these videos and the topic you tackle. Big shout-out here, and I'm impatiently waiting for the next instalment !

imagine a bucket of these thrown over a wall during a seige.

Would love to see javelin penetration testing

I really appreciate the transparency of your videos. They're not edited to leave out mistakes and inaccurate throws/shots

Like a Shuriken, a big problem is: When you miss, It will likely be coming back at you soon. That doesn’t happen so much with many other kinds of projectiles.

Tod these experimental archeology series continue to be my most looked forward to videos on a weekly basis. Keep it up dude!

When throwing overhand you should throw them like a throwing knife: hold the back end of the dart in your palm with index finger pointing down the shaft. When throwing it try to empart as little spin on the dart when releasing it. That should get it it fly more straight and a more even trajectory

NPC: "I was an adventurer once. But I took a dart in the knee."

Imagine holding your shield and one of these catches you on the foot. You’re pinned to the ground -:-

One theory I heard is that it is the second and third row of legionaries that throws them.They throw them in a high, steep arch right before impact with the enemy. So an enemy combatant in the front line has the choice of either raising the shield and opening up his legs and lower torso to the first row of legionaries, but protecting against the plumbata or ignoring the plumbata and risk being injured by one. Either way the first impact of the enemy infantry is lessend.

next two t-shirts: "Dont plumbata til you see the whites of their eyes!" and "Put the fear of mars into them!" lol

Thanks for this! Fascinating video that I stumbled on, and I’m glad! Good on you!

I’ve just been binging this channel and I love how passionate Tod gets about this stuff, it’s just fun to watch

And this children, is why we can no longer buy lawn darts in the US....

Give it a week and Joerg Sprave will have a full auto plumbata gun

I just found my next make it at home project ....thanks Tod very cool demo

I started watching your content simply because it’s accessible as you have actual closed captioning! Thank you (to whoever did the editing, unless that’s you Tod).

And that is why they banned lawn darts.

Great job Tod :) Not a bad throwing

Great Video! Love it.

This was like watching a new recruit's first day training montage. Awesome!

Imagine you're just about to hit the enemy line, and every other roman is throwing these high up in the air to fall down on them, all the while (maybe a split second later) the other half of the roman line are chucking these straight forwards. It would cause chaos.

Imagine getting 50 of them adding a basket and a catapult or ballista.

The British Roman reenactment group Commitatus used these both on foot and mounted, and had some impressive results, throwing underhand, overhand and a sidearm throw at close range. Being on the receiving end of a blunt dart launched from a rider at a canter was apparently quite the terror.

There was a battle in the Peloponnesian War, I think called the Battle of Pylos (it took place on a small island called Pylos), where the Athenian darters were the decisive element for beating a Spartan detachment. The Athenians had chased the Spartans up onto a hill and the darters came out and unleashed on the Spartans until they couldn't fight anymore. Thucydides talks about it.

remember kiddies use lead free dart when hunting joints of gammon

Not just Roman! They saw extensive use in the Early Medieval period, even up to about 1000 AD

I can see them disorganizing a charge and breaking an enemy’s focus. Practical archeology at its best. Well done

Thank you. Apart from learning something new, I have now a new idea of what I could throw at my Players in one of our next sessions. Well, just to stay clear, at their characters.

Someone literally gave a 12 minute video a dislike at least 8 minutes after it was posted

So that's why the Gauls feared that the sky would fall on their heads.

Cool! Thank You!

Thank you , Tod .

7:35 wait, wait, wait. So these Plumbata things are essentially the Roman version of our modern day Flashbang!?

They can be thrown by a yoke stick kinda like the goat's foot, that would be the martial secret that isn't disclosed in drawings. Shorten the fletchings to the last 1/3rd of what you have and put a knob behind them on the shaft. Lawn darts. Another way to throw them, still with only 1/3rd the length of fletching, is to place them across your palm with your hand angled so the side of your hand with your thumb is lined up with your forearm bones. Lay the weight just behind the tips of your index and ring fingers and stand with your non-throwing side towards the target. Palm up with arm across to opposite side, place in palm. spin arm down around and up and then release by letting your thumb and fingertips relax. It's like a backhand throw. Just let it slip out. You should be able to get about 55-65m with the windmill and about 38-45m with the backhand fling. Your "rate of fire" with the backhand, thrown literally from a series of tubes bandolier, can be as high as 5 in 4 seconds. They are *actually* for hunting small game.

Finally a quality set of jarts

If I remember correctly, the Greeks also could use a sling to get these darts to greater heights, distances, and could possibly penetrate wicker shields, like many Persians had (my speculation). Also, I think the Romans also used some slings for pila, which I'd assume would be used by dedicated skirmishers, and we can imagine the slings allowed the pila to glide over a Roman formation, or over their layered fortifications. Now, when I imagine the Battle of Thermopylae, I imagine the Persian army getting pelted by these, stones, arrows, and javelins as soon as they rounded that corner. The phalangites there had been training for weeks w the picked Spartan royal guard, and could maneuver back and forth, and they had rebuilt a wall to stand behind the phalanx, a perfect place to hurl these missiles. One can imagine the Persians and their allies had to stop the combat whenever the bodies mounted too high: or else you can imagine men stumbling over the dead, further making them vulnerable to missiles, and if they survived, their loss of cohesion would stand no chance against the mighty wall of hoplite. Not that they stood a chance even with their cohesion, as the Greeks, as I hinted, must have cycled their troops. There were thousands of Greek combatants, and they only needed one phalanx at a time (300 men) to hold that point at any given time. On the advance to the narrowest point: Herdotus writes the width as "two chariots wide". Cheers!

Could the Romans honorably fight with such an underhanded weapon?

I feel like I have to warn you, Todd... I LOVE your semi-scientific videos, period. I feel like you are very aware of your own biases. All of that said, I have never seen a channel featuring a non-scientist which actually managed to maintain that for more than a couple of years. Please stay who you are and keep checking yourself properly! I would really love for you to be the only channel with this kind of content that I have ever stayed subscribed to!

I enjoyed watching you have fun with the war darts

I always found war darts to be interesting. Never seen these kind before, they didn't disappoint.

Reminds me of the lawn darts we played with when I was a kid.

Also worth considering that in a tight infantry formation, troops likely wouldn't have the space in front of them for an underhand throw. Overhand makes way more sense considering that fact unless you're in the foremost line.

hey you did a plumbata video. awesome. I requested this a while back in a comment

Looks like a great present for kids at Christmas!

When you were doing the argument about the speed throwing, I had the feeling that quantity, was a factor, and it seems that gravity would be doing most of the work, so I wonder... could you throw a group of them at once? And if you did, what would the spread be like? Why even go for accuracy? The darts are small enough that you could carry a good quantity of them, and just saturate the field with what amounts to a shotgun/multi shot approach. If you can, say, have every soldier on the first couple ranks just launch a couple hand fulls of 5 darts at the right time, that might be more effective than trying to aim them.

Anybody else herre because of Joerg Sprave? Great content Tod, looking forward to getting familiar with your channel!

That was great!

Enjoyed your Tod video so I gave it a Thumbs Up They are some nasty darts and wouldn't want to be hit by them for sure

Everyone knows you should use the official scientific "Paul Harrell" meat target to determine effectiveness of ammo...geeze. Great video!

My contribution: skin makes a noticeable difference on "meat" resistance, as does clothing. I suggest doing penetration tests on meat with skin and some kind of clothing.

Very good video sir....respect... cheers from Texas 👍

Lawn darts with hunting tips... love it!

I looked at this and thought "Surely that would be better with a launcher - a bit like an atlatl or your dog's tennis ball thrower". Great video! Those combined with caltrops must have been great fun...

The scene opens with Chekov's leg of meat, just sitting there very conspicuously. I wonder what's going to happen to it.

I too played a lot with lawn darts back in the day! I remember once we tried to go for distance and someone sent a dart over into the second neighbour's yard, right into is brand new above ground swimming pool....made quite a mess of his lawn!!!

Looking fit Todd.

I’m fairly sure that you can throw them like you would a throwing knife with instinctive/no spin techniques. I bet the results would be interesting

I've been curious about these, thanks.

I want a couple dozen of these. It looks fun.

The noise produced when those entered the flesh..."There was a sound of ripping fabric as the sword bit deep".

An ideal projectile for mass launching by a "ballista". Imagine launching 50 or100 at a time, and multiple machines.

HEY i remember these! our parents let us play with them back in the day. i loved lawn darts

these are more scary than I expected!

The chef in me is screaming "I hope he sanitized after touching the raw pork" lol. Very interesting video!

In those times not everyone was armored. Imagine a slave uprising and a legionare using this as we now use watercannons against riots, the bloody kind.

Lawn darts were much deadlier with a better throwing handle.

Damn fine shirt! Got mine ordered up :)

I loved lawn darts. God. Growing up in the early eighties was great.

Can you imagine the effect they would have if they were loaded into a catipult 2 dozen at a time and launched over the enimy line at a high arch , dozens of small sharp projectiles that's hard to see raining down on them , even if they missed the head but contacted an arm or leg would effectively slow them down .

As for speed, I have a theory that multiple were thrown at the same time. Kind of like a shotgun of barbed darts. Doesn't seem like it would be too difficult. Toss 2-5 of them underhand quickly at the enemy charge and draw your primary weapon.

Not interested in old weapons but you are a great presenter and very entertaining.

I have heard in a video of British reanactors that the plumbata would actually be thrown into the sky. This was done when running towards the enemy, in combination with throwing the pila. When there are pila comming from you front and plumbata from the sky you won't know where to hold your shield, causing more casualties and I presume more panic.

“Been facinated by them for 20 (t)odd years!” Thought that was funny

So playing on the idea of it being a harassing weapon to slow down an enemy charge and to distract them for a moment, would it stand to reason in order to get as many out as possible they may have thrown 2-3 at a time? Just getting as many into the air in a short amount of time as possible. You loose accuracy and some distance but then you are getting into the territory of "accuracy by volume"

9:15 when that hit the mean I let an audible groan - that would have hurt like hell. As a Roman historian, this was awesome to watch.

I really need to play a rogue character in D&D with these.

I guess you've probably thought of this yourself after the throwing better than expected incident, but maybe something like plexiglass or another transparent material that is often used to shield cameras from flying shrapnell during explosion testing could be worth having around. If you're going to test things like armour and get a glancing hit followed by the arrow being deflected to a camera that wouldn't be great either. Nasty little darts btw, wrapping the meat in some clothes could be interesting as well to observe if it behaves the same as normal arrows/bolts (fast + low mass) compared to slower with higher mass with these darts.

If the damage dealt to that camera isn't proof that an underhanded throw is effective then I don't know what is.

I never knew they existed. I made them as toys when I was a kid about 40 years ago lol. Mine were made of wood though, and if you put a notch on the end you can use string as a sling to throw them at your mates at the other end of a football field :)

Excellent video - informative content as always. I soon expect @Tod's will develop a medieval version of Paul Harrel's meat target ;)