Praetorian Archer Reaching For An Arrow (ROM100)

We know Roman archers practised, because one of the things they practised on survives. An ox skull excavated at Vindolanda carries forty-five clear perforations across the frontal bone alone, with three more below the facial crests — about forty-eight small holes in one animal's forehead. A 2019 study scanned the cranium together with arrowheads from the site and fitted the two to each other: bodkin-shaped heads physically match most of the holes, biting between 1.28 and 1.84 centimetres into the bone. Ballista bolts were tested against it and fitted nothing, so this was men shooting rather than machines. The internal angling shows the arrows came from the front and were aimed at the face, and a hole through the back of the skull is most likely where it was fixed to hold it upright. In places an arrow had been pulled out and the same spot shot at again. That is what repetition looks like when it survives eighteen centuries. This figure is that repetition, caught in the middle. The bow stays upright and the drawing hand goes back past his shoulder for the next arrow — the one movement an archer makes more often than any other, and the only one nobody puts on a monument. The arithmetic behind it is unforgiving: Petru Ureche reckons an archer empties a thirty-arrow quiver in roughly three minutes, after which a man in mail is holding a very expensive stick. It is the reason he stands where he stands, behind the line and inside the fort, rather than out in front of it. He wears the same mail over a white dark-hemmed tunic, purple leggings and gilt helmet as the rest of the set, with a banded quiver and a red-bound fitting at his left hip. Praetorian Archer Letting Loose is the instant before this one, and Praetorian Archer Aiming High completes the four — stood together they read as one man shown four times rather than four men doing the same thing, which is the better diorama. For the fort that produced the skull, Roman Soldiers at Ease is the same garrison off duty: Vindolanda gave us both the target and the letters. Model: ROM100 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set