CATA PULTA,
a Warlike Engine so cal∣led, with which the Ancients used to throw Ja∣velins twelve or fiftten Foot long. The De∣scription of a Catapulta, says M. Perrault in his Notes upon Vitruvius, is understood by no Body, tho' many great Persons have applied them∣selves to it very carefully, as Justus Lipsius has observed. The Descriptions which Athenaeus, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Vegetius have given of it; the two Figures, which are in the Book of a nameless Author, entituled, Notitia Im∣perii; that which Will. de Choul says, he took out of an ancient Marble, that which Lipsius saw in the Arsenal at Brussels, and those which are drawn on Trajan's Pillar do none of them agree with the Description of Vitruvius. Caesar Cisaranus, who is the first who after Jocundus drew the Figures of Vitruvius with the greatest Exactness, has not attempted to draw a Cata∣pulta, but when he had translated and explained Vitruvius as far as that place, he leaves the Work, and Benedictus Jovius finished it. Jo∣cundus declares, when he gives us his Figure of it, that he did it not to explain the Text of Vi∣truvius, because it did not agree with it, and he owns that he did not understand either his own Figure, nor the Text of Vitruvius.
All that we know in general of the Catapulta is this, that they were made to cast Javelins, as Balistae were used to cast Stones, tho' this Di∣stinction is not observed by latter Latin Au∣thors, who have always expressed both these Engines by the Word Balista. Lucan tells us,