![046[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/yBWQfvN.jpg "046[1].jpg")
Why did Homeric heroes rely on javelins when they had bows?
>>29472612
bow weapon of coward
throwing spear strong
person who reply saying wrong are bignose tribe and probably berrypicker as well
>>29472625
Ogg use stick to throw stick
SailingAtlatl.wallpainting
>>29472625
What bout fling rock with rope thing above head?
A javelin fits the metaphor of a dick more than a bow does.
>>29472698
me hope you have NFA rock from tribe elder or else guard dog be sacrificed to harvest god
You can use a javelin and a shield at the same time
>>29472711
Fucking beat me to it, except I was going for the phallus and some basic Freud.
>>29472625
>>29472676
>>29472720
You're mixing the Stone Age with the Bronze Age.
>>29472612
It's unseemly you'd kill a man with that little prick without even using the strength zeus gave you.
Be a man and thrust your shaft into the enemy with your own two hands and arms, not with a stick and string like some persian pussy fucker.
>>29472736
and you are painting in weird language, man-of-autism-tribe
>>29472612
Some used bows. Ajax and Teucer's defense of the Greek fleet comes to mind.
>>29472612
Because the Greek method of combat focused on the melee and spear
Ancient Greek combat was characterized by the use of heavy bronze armor, shield, and spear. The increased mass and structural integrity of a javelin gave it a better chance of penetrating the armor than the arrows and bows of the time. Also, when spears were held aloft they would foul the trajectory of a lot of arrows coming down on the phalanx.
The bow certainly had it's place in Hellenic warfare (though not nearly to the extent it did in the east) but for the clash of phalanx against phalanx the javelin was simply the better tool for the job.
>>29472749
d-did you even read the Odyssey?
>>29472612
Peltast life bro
Spearing niggas like its cool since 400bc
>>29472612
Except for that book by Homer where Odysseus strings a bow to kill every motherfucker in the room.
>>29475031
Passage?
>>29475031
One of my favorite parts of the story. Odysseus was a Bronze Age operator.
greek bows are were a stick with a string, and had cultural stigma against them. spears were good and also not for pussies
>>29475084
It's near the end. His wife's getting pressured hard by the suitors at that time to finally move on, so she sets the condition that whoever is able to string the bow, which supposedly only Odysseus can do, will be the one chosen. So Odysseus sneaks into the contest, strings it, and kills all of them for daring to try to take her.
>>29472612
Because a javelin can be used in close combat with a shield. And I am fairly sure heroes used bows occasionally.
>>29472858
>arrowcatch pikes
This is such a retarded idea yet I'm sad I never even thought of it
>>29475031
>>29475100
>>29476747
I forgot about this part until it was mentioned. It's fucking great. Thank you for jogging my memory.
Isn't the dog also the only one who recognizes him? Or does he not? Is there even a dog? My memory is generally shitty.
>>29472612
Some others:
Paris killed Achilles with a bow.
Philoctetes killed Paris with the bow of Heracles.
>>29472770
>>29478877
I remember hearing about it in some history class. They would hold the pikes vertically and wave them around. With a block of 50 dudes doing this, the last ranks would be pretty safe I guess.
I'd be curious to see this put to test.
>>29479238
That would be extremely tiring. I call bullshit on it. Just holding them vertically would already prevent a degree of damage from plunging arrows.
>>29472936
This guy gets it.
Peltast 4 lyfe. Javelin til I die.
>>29479266
>extremely tiring
These motherfuckers lived on bread and water as their staple food - that's it. Waving a pole around to save your own life isn't going to be too difficult.
>>29479280
Peltasts were the reason Spartan society crumbled into nothing.
You can spend your entire life dedicated to melee combat but a spear in the back kills you just the same.
>hiding in bushes for days
>just to throw a stick into a dude's ribcage
Ain't life grand.
Let us say I wanted to learn how to use a bow for combat/survival needs. How does one pick the best weapon or get started in doing such?
LITERALLY NOBODY IS MENTIONING ODYSSEUS AND HIS BOW?
SERIOUSLY??
Did I miss it?
>>29478970
Argos. When Odysseus arrives at the house, he finds his dog forlorn near piles of manure and covered in ticks and lice and too weak to get up. Argos recognizes it was Odysseus and wags his tail., but Odysseus can't return the affection otherwise he'll blow his cover. Argos dies almost immediately afterword, his duty served to see his master return home.
As quoted, with one part removed for brevity:
As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, dashed a tear from his eyes without Eumaeus seeing it, and said:
'Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?'
'This dog,' answered Eumaeus, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their work when their master's hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.'
So saying he entered the well-built mansion, and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years.
>>29479340
>LITERALLY NOBODY IS MENTIONING ODYSSEUS AND HIS BOW?
>>29476747
>>29479307
>These motherfuckers lived on bread and water as their staple food - that's it.
And you think that somehow negates the point? And note that staple does not mean only food.
>Waving a pole around to save your own life isn't going to be too difficult.
It's only going to be marginally more effective than just holding them upright normally while at the same time tiring out your arms. Seeing as you're in a battle, you might find that you'll be needing to fight sooner or later. Going into said fight after exhausting yourself for little gain is going to get you killed and your lines broken, as you face someone a good deal fresher than you who can keep at it longer.
>>29479323
Either that or being a slinger hurling rocks at fuckboys.
>>29479341
Even the ancients knew dogs were awesome and bros. Fuck cats.
>>29479266
It's literally one passage in Polybius that states this, years after anybody used the pike phalanx. Actual historical evidence like the English-Scottish wars refute this but it's a meme idea by now. I'd actually like to see some re-enactors put it to the test ad bury the idea once and for all but experimental archeology is too unsexy for anybody to try.
>>29479372
Cats were super important too, just not really as pets like dogs. Cities meant large-scale agriculture, which mean grain storage, when meant vermin. The cats willing to go among the humans to hunt did great, and those with the domesticable traits bred into modern housecats.
>>29479340
OP's image is of Odysseus and his bow.
>>29472612
You can't exactly use a bow and a shield to stick someone in the gut when they've gotten close.
>>29479331
bumping for interest.
>>29480308
You're right that must be why no one used bows in war ever.
>>29480339
I just answered OP's question as to why the ancients liked javelins so much.
Archers are all well and good, but if any semi-serious melee force catches up with them, they're thoroughly fucked.
>>29480435
>I just answered OP's question as to why the ancients liked javelins so much.
Why answer a question when you know nothing about it?
>>29472612
I was going to say that they likely did not have access to the right type of woods for high strength bow making. However after looking into the range of Yew and finding that it does reach into Greece that fly's out the window. And after some reading it looks like there was noted archers among the heroes of homers works, Teukros and Meriones. What is likely the best answer is this....
> It is an important issue that Odysseus had been very afraid of the Suitors getting proper body shields when trapping them, which means he doubted for the penetrating power of the weapon (χ-146/8): Indeed, the Iliad we read of no arrows piercing shields and wounding the carrier, which is not the case with spears.
http://koryvantesstudies.org/studies-in-english-language/page210-2/
Maybe the large size of the shields in use limited the size of the bows the could be carried onto the field, which in turn makes the bow weaker.I know that some people are going to go to the subject of up the Mongolian bows which have a very high draw strength and are also small in size. Those types of bows are complex in construction and it would not surprise me if the needed know how to make that type of a bow was not a thing in 9th century BC Greece when Homer was making his epics.
>>29481636
There's also a pretty good likelyhood that it was a high draw weight composite bow that both required great strength and knowing the right technique to reverse and string it.
>>29472612
Javelins (and slings) can be used with a shield. Bows cannot. The bows in use at that time were fairly weak as well. Also keep in mind they didn't use *just* javelins they used mechanical aids to throw them and these things were actually quite powerful.
All that said, they DID use some bows too. But an archer at the time would likely be a peasant with no armor and no ability to stand and fight. A javelin is specifically well-suited to be part of the gear of a heavy infantryman who expects to throw a couple of them as he's close to melee, rather than trying to stand off all day firing little arrows.
>>29482186
>The bows in use at that time were fairly weak as well.
Questionable basis. They'd have to be 40 pounds or heavier on the draw to be useful for hunting. English Longbows were atypical in several ways, notably in their extreme draw weights and being selfbows, staves made from a single piece of wood instead of laminates, and were so overpowered because their primary targets wore steel plate.
>>29482186
You can't throw a javelin while holding a shield, or while protecting yourself with a shield.
>>29481636
Composite bows of that era would fall apart in humid or wet environments. That's why in central europe at that time you see huge fuck off longbows while out east you see composite bows.
>>29482339
I'll give you questionable, on thinking it over. We have very little evidence of the bows at the time and there's room for doubt.
>>29482354
The hell you can't. That's actually *exactly* how they were used, and we know this beyond any shadow of a doubt, because several writers go into this in some detail, and it's often portrayed in art. The javelins were secured to the backside of the shield itself going into battle, generally from 2-4 of them, and they would be removed and thrown 1 by 1 as the two sides closed.
Pic related.
>>29475031
https://youtu.be/CJRgYAZMKyA?t=1438
>>29482711
Homer literally never talks about javelins being used while using the offhand to hold a shield.
>>29482857
Homer doesn't, but contemporary art shows it extensively, as do a multitude of other writers.
>>29482857
Wrong. This is literally what happened during duels of Hector of Ajax and Hector and Achilles.
>>29478877
Actually, that's correct.
Ever seen that game where you drop a ball bearing down a piece of plywood with dozens of nails driven in it, hoping that it will hit a certain slot at the bottom? Arrows did that when they hit a phalanx.
Sort of, anyway.
>>29483063
Doesn't Hector just run around the city a couple of times before getting kill like a bitch?
Remember also they did not simply throw the javelin. It would have been prepared with a strap like this, giving the same mechanical advantage as an atl-atl. They were recorded to have gone through the heavy body-shields used in bronze age times regularly. I'm not aware of any case where an arrow was recorded to have done that.
>>29472711
Bow is more of dick head shooting sperm so there's that...
I was looking at Ragim's website considering a bow and couldn't figure out how to tell if I was the right height or whatnot when I stumbled across [image related]. Does that have anything to do with getting fit for a bow and if so how do I tell what that all means? I was thinking of buying their "archery set" ( http://www.ragim.org/product/beginners-bows/archery-set ) under their beginner's category; costs about $175 on Amazon ) but I'm hesitant to make a purchase until I know if I'm a match for it or not.
>>29483536
Recurves: Measure arm span from fingertip to fingertip. Divide by 2.5. See chart for optimum range for you.
Longbow: Should be an inch or two taller than you strung (AMO length).
>>29483221
No, read the book again you moron.
He gets killed because Athena returns Achilles' spear to him, after he had thrown it at Hector, and Hector seeing his chance charged at him, only to get speared in the throat, and he could not move out of the way in time.
