Ancient Bio/Chemical Weapons

I'm reading a book right now by Adrienned Mayor called "Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & Scorpion Bombs", and I've been fascinated by its writings.

According to this book, biological and chemical weapons were extremely abundant in the arsenals of the Greek, Roman, Persian, Indian, and many other power's militaries. The Greek and Roman armies fielding said weapons really strikes me, for both those camps honoured the fair and courageous fight, and both saw weapons, such as poison tipped arrows, as cowardly and dishonourable.

Anyways, the sheer variety and lethality of ancient bio/chemical weapons is amazing. Take scythicon for example. It was used by the infamous Scythian people of the Caucasus region. Scythicon was a poison used to tip arrows, and was made from putrified human plasma (they had a still unknown method of seperating the plasma from blood), feces, and viper venom. That combination spelled death for anyone who even recieved a grazing wound from an arrow shot by a Scythian archer. The book also traces a relation between Hercules's killing of the Hydra and utilizing its poison to the Scythians justification for using poison on the battlefield.

Another vile weapon was the poison, also used to tip arrows, from the purple snake of India. The snake did not bite, but would vomit up venom on it's victim. The venom was reputed to putrify limbs and, if it entered the blood stream, liquify the brain so that it "ran out the nose".

Other weapons include fragile vases and containers filled with poisonous insects that were catapulted into enemy formations and cities. The book also goes into the use of deadly beasts for war, such as the elephants fielded by Porus and Hannibal, war dogs, and deadly vipers launched into enemy cities.

The book is definitly worth a read. Another book, mentioned in this book, is the Arthashastra, an ancient Indian manuscript written by Kautilya that describes a whole arsenal of biological and chemical weapons and the justifications for their usage.

 

Sounds very interesting.

I would be especially interested in anything it had to say about Greek fire, as so little appears to be known about it.

 

For both the Greeks and the Romans, rules of chivalry in war applied only to peoples considered equal. When fighting wars with barbarians, that is, everyone who spoke a different language, everything was allowed. Besides, in the case of the Greeks warfare as a form of sport between city-states had largely been abandoned even before the rise of Macedon and replaced with a much more vicious form of warfare mostly propagated by mercenaries. The example you give of Scythian poisoned arrows shows this very neatly; these "unfair" weapons of war were brought in from strange lands by foreigners babbling incomprehensible languages and wearing such strange garments as pants.

 

i read somewere that they used the rotting corpess of animals or humans to bombard siege cities, is that civilised?

 

Not at all, but you will probably find this sort of tactics used no earlier than the 5th century BC, and probably not by Romans against Romans.

 

Concerning defensive purposes, do you guys think using chemical and biological weapons is justifiable? Afterall, the defenders, or besieged, have a legitimate right to use whatever methods necessary to overcome the attackers, or so I feel. Of course, with that standard one can say that the aggressors may righteously use such sinister weapons if the defenders used them initially.

David, according to this book the name Greek Fire relates more to the delivery system of the ammunition than the ammunition itself. The main ingredient of the ammunition appears to have been naphtha, an early form of napalm. That with a few other inciendary chemicals like sulpher and quicklime mixed in created a highly volative and flammable compound that stuck to everything and was not quenched by water, and may have actually been fueled by water.

We humans have had a long time to get good at this stuff. :roll:

 

naphtha = crude oil gathered on surface most probably from area of Black sea.
We still use term nafta in Slovene (and most slavic languages).
Oil was most probably mixed with wood resins (to get it sticky since oil from that region is relativly light), probably quck lime ( to react with water)...

It is not so much exact recepie but means of deployment that is questionable. Some say that it was basicly a flamethrower others that they were used as fire bombs for catapult. I would say that according to ancient texsts first option is more likely.

And BTW it was not ancient Greek weapon but Bysantinian invention (Eastern Roman empire). it was used for the first time in battle against moslem fleet. I don't remember the name, but the name of inventor of greek fire is known and is written in ancient texts and if i reccall correctly he was refugee from Asia mionor ( Turkey or Syria).

 

Some sources claim that even Alexander the Great encountered something like naphta, so I doubt it's a Byzantine invention. Peoples around the Black Sea were known for their ruthless way of warfare even in ancient times.

 

Yes, that's probably true, but Greek Fire is something totally different. It relates more to the delivery system than to the ammunition it fired. The delivery system was a complex series of tubes and valves and found itself most applicable on ships. It was a relatively modern form of a, like TISO said above, flamethrower. Such complexity and ingenuity I wouldn't put past Byzantine inventors.

In any case, the ammunition used contained more than just naphtha.

 

Then there was the use of quicklime - chuck the powder off your battlements and it permanently blinds your enemies...

 

Are you sure about that?
IIRC Greek Fire was used quite extensively in sieges at one point, catapulted over the walls in large pots.

 

I wouldn't describe Greek fire as Bio/Chem weapon. That would equal describing Thermite incindiary as chemical weapon.

 

What I've read over Greek Fire certainly describes more a primitive flamethrower than any type of special ammunition. I'm not denying Greek Fire was, too, an ammunition, but, since similar inciendiary weapons have been around for centuries beforehand, the fame of Greek Fire must have something to do with the ingenious way it was "delivered" to the enemy.

IDK, Greek Fire is a term thrown around to often to mean just about any kind of unquenchable fire weapon. The weapon stored in pots and launched by catapults could have been a weapon known as Greek Fire, or it could have been naphtha, or a mixture of different substances like pitch and sulpher.

 

I always thought that 'Greek Fire' was a specific chemical mix - usually associated with anti-shipping, so presumably it was a mixture that either ignited on contact with water or at least was not extinguished with water.

However, knowing from my Uni days quite how unspecific Medieval writers could be about military terminology (one text I read used fourteen different highly-specific Latin terms for the same 'army', and five different highly-specific Latin terms for the same set of fortifications) I can easily believe that every and any flammable chemical used was simply labelled 'Greek Fire'.

 

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the mongols when laying siege to a georgians port , were devastated by the
black plague , wich they had brought from northern china . they tossed the
dead bodies over the walls to give the townsfolk the disease as well .

it worked , as the place was becoming a death trap a genoese ship made a
break for the open sea , carrying the plague to genoa and europe .

.

 

catapaulting dead men and horses was a common tactic in mediaeval warfare... hardly sounds chivalrous

 

a cheap effective and fun way of solving the sanitation problem
beat digging graves

 

Should I point out that 'chivalry' was largely an empty ideal, essentially propaganda fostered by the church in order to try and restrain the warrior classes somewhat.

If you read the literature of the times (which was supposed to follow these ideals) it almost all revolves around knights doing brave and mighty deeds in order to earn the chance to sleep with the woman they're trying to impress (usually their host's wife).

 

'chivalry' is tied up with the Arthurian legends which is also a load of bunkum.

Neither such concept existed in medieval europe

FNG

 

Well there was a certain amount of good manners amongst the best kind
of people , the ones worth ransom and with famillies connections
most of them were related , by lineage or marriage to the
greatest mafia familly of them all, the merovingians or their upstard
rivals the normans . :smok:
.
.
for the riff raff , of course , no such courtesies would apply
the tradition for the foot soldiers to run fast from a lost battle was based
on the grim fact that they would be probably slaughtered as not
worth their food :-?
.
.
usually the loosing soldiers , lost away from home
would become bandits for a living
joined shortly after by the winning soldiers let loose rather than
paying them
.
.