TPO30

The reading and the lecture are both about burning mirrors and their effectiveness in burning roman ships by Greek of Syracuse. The author of the article believes that this story is not realistic and Greeks could not have had such mirrors. The lecturer challenges the claims made by the author. She is of the opinion that the reasons made by the article are not convincing.

To begin with, the article states that building these sophisticated mirrors needs a great deal of knowledge and technology; however, Greeks was not enough technologically advanced. This specific argument is challenged by the lecturer. She claims that Greeks was able to create small mirrors with a very precise parabolic curvature, which were single sheet. Additionally, she claims that Greeks would have built immense burning mirrors by assembling a dozen of small polished mirrors.

Secondly, it is said in the reading that it would take Greeks a relatively a lot of time to start a fire on Roman ships. Furthermore, based on an experiment, the writer argues that it took 10 minutes as long as the target object was fixed. The lecturer, however, rebuts this by stating that the experiment mentioned by the author is for a ship which is totally built of wood. Nevertheless, Roman ships would not have made of only wood, but they include a water proof substance named Pitch which catches fire quickly. It means that, according to lecturer, as soon as the Pitch got fired, the fire spread out through the ship immediately.

Third, it is stated in the article that Greeks had already possessed a weapon, flaming arrows, as efficacious as burning mirror at the same distances to set fire on Romans ship. Therefore, it was implausible to create and implement these kind of mirrors. In contrast, the lecturer states that using burning mirrors were much more surprising that flaming arrows were. He notes that Romans were already familiar with flaming arrows and learned how to protect their ships from getting fired. However, Roman soldiers could not see the rays of burning mirror; therefore, suddenly, a magical fire would have started.