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General
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* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in and want to post a quick comment as Esteemed Visitor, that's fine; see above.
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Final
All the above is standard stuff for community web sites, but reminders are good; I hate post-related glitches, and hate to see people run into them on this site. On this or any site, it's a good practice to do a quick "Select All" and "Copy" on your post text before hitting "Preview comment" or "Post comment" – just in case.
For more on the whole topic of interaction with the site, please see User Interaction (opens in new window).
Weapon data
Sat, 2006-12-30 11:56 — Esteemed VisitorB (not verified)If I might suggest a couple of sources, there's "From Sumer to Rome" by Richard Gabriel and Karen Metz. There's a chapter discussing experiments done with re-created ancient weapons and armor, including an estimate of weight, speed in use and energy produced, plus energy required to penetrate armor. Note: armor works. They in turn relied on Yigael Yadin's "Art of Warfare in Biblical Lands" which I do not have but have heard good things about. "From Sumer to Rome" also includes a discussion of how the superior speed of Roman swordsmen helped them beat Greek spearmen (getting back to another subject on this web site.) I can provide the data if you'd like but the book is worth a look.
If you haven't checked it already, http://www.thearma.org/ might have useful information on weapon performance as well.
-DW