Projectile point or knife
Category
Arms and armour
Date
100 AD - 400 AD
Materials
Iron
Measurements
65 mm (Height)
Order this imageCollection
Bateman's, East Sussex
NT 760488
Summary
One of two iron projectile points with three fins, most likely from a ballista bolt, Roman.
Full description
One of three Roman projectile points once owned by Rudyard Kipling (see also 760489 and 760490). In 'Something of Myself', Kipling writes: 'A longer chance that I took in my Roman tales was when I quartered the Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth (Ulpia Victrix) Legion on the Wall, and asserted that there Roman troops used arrows against the Picts. The first shot was based on honest 'research'; the second was legitimate inference. Years after the tale was told, a digging-party on the Wall sent me some heavy four-sided, Roman-made, 'killing' arrows found in situ and--most marvellously--a rubbing of a memorial-tablet to the Seventh Cohort of the Thirtieth Legion! Having been brought up in a suspicious school, I suspected a 'leg-pull' here, but was assured that the rubbing was perfectly genuine'.