The instrumentes wherwith the antiquitie defended townes, where manie: as balistes, onagris, scorpions, Arcubalistes, Fustibals, Slinges: and also those were manie with which thei gave assaultes.
"Machiavelli, Volume I The Art of War; and The Prince"
Niccolò Machiavelli
balistes biaculeatus, W. Benn.
"Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon"
J. Emerson Tennent
And Musike he must nedes know: that he may haue vnderstanding, both of Regular and Mathematicall Musike: that he may temper well his balistes, Catapultes, and Scorpions.
"The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara"
John Dee