Onager (machine)

See also: Onager

The onager is a machine of seat. It is a kind of catapults giant which was used by the Romains.

Its name comes to him from the analogy of its movement with that of the Ruade of a onager, kind of ass wild.

According to the Dictionary reasoned of the French architecture of the {{sp-|XI|E|with|XVI|E|S}} (volume 5), the Roman historians agrees all to arrange the onager, as the catapult and the scorpion, in the machines of offensive jets but their descriptions are, either brief, or contradictory: one finds the onager term indeed like synonym of scorpion at Marcellin (6th century) or onager like launching machine of the stones (in opposition to the javelins) at Végèce, or onager as synonymous vulgar with catapult at Jean the Lydian.

Some describe it as a small catapult able to send small projectiles 30 away m or 40 m in height, others like a giant crossbow.

Johann Silberschlag in its Essay on the three principal machines of war of old, knowledge the catapult, the balista and the onager (Academy of Science of Berlin 1760) analyzes with precision the texts of Vitruve and Marcellin. It then distinguishes the machines intended to launch features (catapults) and those intended to launch stones (triggerfishes). It then arranges the onager rather in the family of the balistae of which it differs on some points (p 432). It describes it as an arm of lever out of wooden at the end of which a spoon is. This arm of lever is tended, and when the tension is slackened, the arm of lever draws an arc of circle and comes to strike against a stop while the contents of the spoon fly away in the airs. It confirms that the onager was used much, with or without wheel, during the wars of Jules César. It supposes that it could launch hails of stones, projectiles ignited and even of the corpses.

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