The Bowshot and Marathon

Extract

In a searching analysis of ‘The Campaign and the Battle of Marathon’ (JHS lxxxviii [1968] 13–57) Professor N. G. L. Hammond has paid me the compliment of mentioning my discussion of the range of the ancient bow (17 n. 27). The evidence had suggested to me that the bowshot was ‘at least 160–175 metres, but not as far as 350–450 metres’. These results, in Hammond's words, fail to

‘take into account the nature of the target. For instance his lower figure is based on the firing of incendiary arrows (his T1 = Hdt. viii 52.1), which needed no power of penetration, and the higher figure is based on unarmoured horses at that distance being out of range (his T2 = Hdt. ix 22–23), which is almost equivalent to the extreme range because a horse is easily stung into action by an arrow.’

The near equivalence of ‘out of range’ and ‘within extreme range’ may raise an eyebrow; but let it pass. On the essential point we agree: in Herodotus ix 22–23, two stades is beyond effective bowshot.

So far as the terminus a quo is concerned, the Persian fire arrows shot from the Areopagus must have had some power of penetration; for they were useless unless they stuck to the wooden wall. Moreover, the target was twenty-eight metres higher than the launching-point; if the line of flight were projected downwards to the level of the archers, the cast would have been greater. Again, Herodotus says that the Persians wound hemp around their arrows. Hollow heads for incendiary arrows (JSA-A iii [1960] 22–24) were apparently a later invention; at any rate piles from this assault on the Acropolis are all typical Iranian war-heads (Hesperia ii [1933] 341–342; iv [1935] 114–117). The tinder binding—bulky enough to keep a spark through the trajectory, and then to kindle the barricade—would interfere with the smooth flow of air past the shaft and curtail the range. It follows that, if a fire arrow from the Areopagus could reach the Acropolis 155 metres away, a war arrow from the same bow would carry even further. There are uncertainties, admittedly, but it seems unwise to jettison the testimony of Herodotus viii 52.1 on these grounds.