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The Greek chroniclers struggled to convey what they saw, or even to find a vocabulary to describe the guns. ‘No ancient name exists for this device’, declared the classically minded Kritovoulos, ‘unless someone refers to it as a battering ram or a propeller. But in common speech everyone now calls it an apparatus.’ Other names proliferated: bombards, skeves, helepoles – ‘takers of cities’ – torments and teleboles. In the pressure of the moment, language was being shaped by a terrifying new reality – the infernal experience of artillery bombardment.
It must have been terrifying for them
