Petraria Arcatinus
Petraria Arcatinus means roughly translated a bow powered rock hurler and is a simple form of small siege engine. Like many forms of siege engine there is little concrete historical evidence for its existence but various contemporary drawings do show bow powered siege engines and such a weapon would be a fairly obvious evolution step in weapon design. There is mention of King Louis of France having a Petraria nicknamed bad neighbour at the siege of Acre, but since siege engine names were often used for several different designs this is not conclusive evidence.
How to cite this article:
Dugdale-Pointon, TDP. (19 April 2004), Petraria Arcatinus, http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_petraria.html