From Pompeii to Rhodes, from Survey to Sources: The Use of Polybolos

The authors provide further elements in support of the hypothesized use at Pompeii of an advanced repeating dart-thrower. This article primarily emphasizes the strong formal analogy between Philo of Byzantium’s description (3rd century BC) of the damage produced by the polybolos and the distinctive configurations of quadrangular cavities arranged at short intervals along a curved line, identified and documented during the 2024 digital survey and metric documentation campaigns. The processed trace models, selected as emblematic case studies, constitute the starting point of the workflows developed in collaboration with the interdisciplinary team participating in the SCORPiò-NIDI project (PRIN22). The resulting hypotheses were formulated with awareness of fundamental polemological knowledge, as well as of the historical and technological development of Roman artillery, whose functional principles are now largely clarified. The originality of the study lies in the possibility of “certifying” the dimensional module on which the entire weapon is proportioned, once the terminal ballistic parameters are assessed within a dedicated digital analytical environment. This activity is intended to be further developed, in the hope of fostering broader and more participatory interdisciplinary collaboration within the archeological area of Pompeii. At present, the article reconstructs the research experience acquired so far, highlighting connections between previous publications and proposing both a starting point for further research and a methodological tool for further investigations required to verify the hypothesis and reconstruct the polybolos. The historical relationship between Rhodes and the military decisions preceding the siege of Pompeii provides additional contextual background for the proposed scenario.