Praetorian Archer Aiming High (ROM101)

A raised bow means two opposite things, and K&C's own description names both without quite noticing. Aiming up at a man on a roof is direct shooting at a target you can see, one arrow meant for one person. Plunging fire at distance is the reverse: nobody is aimed at. Petru Ureche describes Roman volleys in the language of small arms — the arrows "describe a cone," and what lands is an ellipse of ground he calls the beaten zone. Archers were posted so that the ellipse covered the enemy, which is why the sources put them where they do: foot archers behind the heavy infantry, shooting over their heads or through the gaps, or out on the flanks beside the slingers. Titus and Valerianus both "placed their archers and spearmen behind the legions." The arithmetic is unforgiving in both directions — shooting over your own men costs you range, while shooting from a slope gives it back. The elevation on this figure is a decision about which of those two jobs he is doing. He is the only one of the four who kneels, which makes him the front rank: a kneeling man lets the rank behind shoot over him, and he is also the smallest target for whoever is up on that wall. He is at full draw, and that matters, because the other three cannot show what this one does. The arrow runs down the left side of the bow — the Mediterranean draw, three fingers on the string, the oldest technique there is, and exactly what Ureche says every archer in the Roman army used. Reconstructions that put a thumb ring on these men imply the opposite. The sculpt takes a side. Otherwise he carries what the rest carry: mail over a white dark-hemmed tunic, bright purple leggings, gilt helmet, and a bow painted bone-white for the horn and bone it was built from. The set is designed to be bought together — Preparing To Fire, Letting Loose and Reaching For An Arrow are the same shooting cycle in its other three positions, and the four read as one man four times rather than four men doing the same thing. Put them behind Rome at War, the six-figure legion set, and the diorama is built the way a Roman commander would have built it: the heavy infantry in front, the arrows going over their heads. Model: ROM101 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set