Huge Roman Ballista Catapulta - Tod’s Workshop TV job

In 2012 I headed the engineering on a TV show where we made a catapulta in 3 days. This machine looks like a ballista and people call it that, but in fact the Romans would have called it a Catapulta (NOT catapult). A ballista shoots stones or round shot. A catapult shoots stones or round shot in medieval Europe. This is a CATAPULTA and shoots arrows. It needed to be big for TV but also work well, so we followed the sizes laid down in Vitruvius and had advice from Alan Wilkins and Tom Feely and of course used the treatise by Marsden. We only managed to get off around 6 or 7 shots before the end of the day and in this very short time were shooting bolts 319m, the long lens on the camera makes it look less, but I am not lying. It could have done considerably more. As it stands 319m is further than any other catapulta shot (at the time) since the fall of the Roman Empire - so we were pretty pleased. Thanks to Mike Sansom for the film. If you are interested in medieval replica weapons take look at