Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs

by Adrienne Mayor

  Like Hercules, Philoctetes was another complex, contradictory figure whose tragic story fascinated the Greeks. One of the many unintended victims of the Hydra arrows, Philoctetes survived to destroy multitudes of Trojans with the same arrows that had brought him so much suffering. Yet at the end of his life, Philoctetes decided to store the terrible bow and quiver safely in a temple of Apollo, instead of passing them on to another warrior. This conclusion to his legend suggests a mythic model for trying to contain the proliferating Hydra heads of biological warfare. The indestructible head of the Hydra monster still lurked somewhere under the earth, but at least the hellish Hydra-venom arrows could be retired from the battlefield, to be guarded by Apollo, who was also the god of healing.

  The other heroes implicated in the use of bio-weapons—Achilles, Paris, and Odysseus—were also ambivalent figures, fitting vehicles for provocative stories about challenging the ideals of fair combat. Homer’s deep understanding of human nature allowed him to show how noble virtues vied with dishonorable impulses in these heroes’ all-too-human characters. In the Iliad, Achilles was the brightest star of Greek warriors, but he was also a savage berserker who committed outrages against Hector and other Trojan foes. Paris, the playboy-warrior who started the Trojan War by taking up with Helen, was berated as a coward by his own brother, Hector, and by his lover, Helen. And the wily Odysseus was the quintessential trickster-warrior, never above stooping to devious weapons and ploys. All three of these heroes lived and died by poisoned weapons.

  The mythic consequences of Hercules’ invention convey a strong warning for those who contemplate the use of biological armaments. The fates of the ancient bio-warriors fulfill an age-old folklore motif of poetic justice known as “the poisoner poisoned,” in which each hero who employed poison weapons was himself harmed or destroyed with the toxic agents, either by accident or in retaliation. There are many modern military examples that demonstrate how “poisoner poisoned” effects, as well as “friendly fire” accidents, continue to threaten those involved in biochemical arms. In 1943, for instance, in the worst Allied seaport disaster since Pearl Harbor, thousands of American soldiers and Italian townspeople in Bari, Italy, were killed by exposure to poison gas when a U.S. ship secretly carrying two thousand chemical bombs was shelled in the harbor by German aircraft. A more recent example is the cluster of health problems suffered by U.S. troops who destroyed Iraq’s biochemical munitions in the Gulf War of 1991. In 2003 it transpired that many of the biological agents used to create those weapons had come from the United States during the 1980s.13

  Another telling feature of the mythology of biochemical warfare is the way the elements of poison, contagion, and fire are intertwined. The actions of deadly toxins and images of unquenchable fires are intermingled in several myths, foreshadowing the later historical accounts of military deployments of poisons and disease vectors, and prefiguring the invention of Greek Fire and earlier petroleum-based weapons, generally considered to be among the most inhumane agents of war ever invented. Weapons based on poisons, contagion, and combustibles are, of course, the prototypes of modern biological weapons and chemical incendiaries. Amazingly, these elemental agents were already combined in the ancient imagination more than three thousand years before the invention of modern germ warfare, napalm, and nuclear conflagrations.14

  Poisoned projectiles, created to inflict extreme suffering and bring ignominious death, were more feared than hand-to-hand combat with swords, spears, axes, and clubs. Poison arrows killed, but never cleanly. In Quintus’s words, they dealt “ghastly wounds that caused the mightiest man to lay faint and wasted with incurable pain.” A simple scratch could result in a gruesome, putrefying wound that turned brave warriors like Philoctetes into pitiful subhumans. Even the superhero Hercules was unmoored by the excruciating pain of the poisoned tunic, uprooting trees and overturning altars, rampaging like a wild beast. “I was the bravest, the mightiest, of all time,” he bellowed, tearing at the cloth soaked in Hydra-venom, “but now, a plague is upon me, which no amount of courage can withstand!” Images like these were grim indeed for a culture steeped in a warrior ethic, where bravery and physical might was valued above all and death in battle was expected to be violent, but at least swift and honorable.

  In antiquity, as today, a blurry line separated acceptable ruses of war from reprehensible tactics and inhumane weapons. For example, Odysseus’s subterfuge of the Trojan Horse seems admirably cunning, until we learn that the trick ushered in Greek atrocities against Trojan women and children. Other myths tell of poisoning rivers and wine to kill enemies, or of giving lethal gifts that concealed poisons or combustible chemicals. But such weapons violated the guidelines of “fair” conflict and corrupted the meaning of courage and skill on the battlefield, for both victor and victim alike. In the face of hidden poisons and biochemical subterfuge, a warrior’s valor, physical strength, and prowess were nullified. In the words of Ovid, subversive weapons of poison were feared and detested because they dealt a “double death.” They killed a man, and extinguished his honor as well.15

  The sheer number of great warriors felled by poison arrows and the numerous unintended casualties in the myths illuminate the powerful impact of the idea of warfare with bio-weapons in antiquity. The pay-off of such practices in actual conflicts could be substantial. Dipping one’s arrowheads into something toxic or infectious would greatly magnify the damage inflicted, and it could be done at a safe distance. Poison projectiles gave confidence to unskilled archers or weak warriors. Even if one’s aim was not very accurate (like Paris, who needed Apollo’s guiding hand), a contaminated weapon would guarantee a high body count.

  The mythic messages about bio-toxic weapons were important to the ancient Greeks and Romans, as shown by the many examples of artwork depicting Hercules killing the Hydra and decimating the Centaurs with poison arrows, the accidental wounding of Hercules’ son Telephus by Achilles, and Hercules done in by his own toxic weapons and bequeathing his quiver to Philoctetes. Hercules dying in the poisoned robe was painted by the famous Greek artist Aristeides in about 360 BC. Another painting in the Acropolis of Athens that showed Odysseus trying to steal the bow and arrows from Philoctetes was admired by tourists as late as the second century AD. Hercules’ death, Telephus’s wounding, and Philoctetes’ anguish were also performed on the stage in tragedies still admired today. And as noted earlier, travelers used to point out the boulder that trapped the Hydra’s immortal head under the earth, and they honored Philoctetes, the inheritor of the first biological weapons, in at least three different shrines in Italy and the Aegean. Tourists in antiquity could even bathe in the hot stream Thermopylae, where Hercules, driven mad by the shirt of burning venom, was said to have plunged.

  The legendary tales of Hercules and Philoctetes and other mythic figures were viewed by the ancient Greeks and Romans as reflections of actual historic episodes in their own very distant past. In popular memories, more recent historical events could also blur into legend, and ancient historians’ accounts of real military campaigns sometimes echo mythological ones. The detailed reports written by numerous Greek, Roman, and other historians, however, provide powerful evidence of how biological and chemical weapons were actually used in warfare.

  2

  ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND THE ARROWS OF DOOM

  To make wounds twice as deadly, these men dip

  In viper’s venom every arrow-tip.

  —OVID, on the Scythians

  It was their custom to throw javelins

  steeped in noxious juices,

  thus disgracing the steel with poison.

  —SILIUS ITALICUS, on the Nubians

  “THERE IS NOTHING more dangerous than poisons and the bites of noxious animals,” wrote Galen, the great Roman physician to gladiators and emperors. We can avoid most dangers by fleeing or defending ourselves, he noted, but the toxins from plants and venomous creatures are treacherous weapons because they strike without warning. The ancients particularly drea
ded encounters with poisonous snakes, a problem that plagued Alexander the Great and his army in India. Things only got worse when the Greeks learned that Indian archers tipped their arrows with snake venom, and Alexander’s soldiers may well have recalled the scene in the Homer’s Iliad, when the Trojan archer Paris recoiled from face-to-face battle with the Greeks. Homer compared Paris to “a man who stumbles upon a viper in a mountain glen. He jumps aside, knees trembling, face pallid, he backs and backs away.” The scene neatly juxtaposes the ancient terror of snakebites with the fear of envenomed arrows.1

  Facing battle required great courage, and knowing that one’s enemies used deadly poisons on their weapons raised the horrors of war to exponential levels. From numerous Greek, Roman, and Indian texts, one learns exactly how virulent arrow poisons were concocted, who used them in the ancient world, and what sorts of countermeasures were attempted.

  Venomous animals enjoy “great confidence” in attacking, commented the natural historian Aelian, in the third century AD, and they are hated by man because they are blessed with such powerful weapons. Based on his own observations of nature, Aelian surmised that Hercules and other Greek heroes got the idea of using venom on their arrows from seeing wasps buzzing around the corpses of vipers. In antiquity, it was widely believed that stinging insects increased the potency of their stings by drawing venom from dead snakes, and in turn, that snakes fortified their venom by devouring poisonous plants. A similar principle was applied to harmful flowers, like aconite or monkshood, which were believed to draw their nutrients from entrances to the Underworld, with its unwholesome vapors. In the same fashion, man could amplify the strength of his weapons by adding natural plant and animal toxins to them. In Aelian’s words, “Hercules dipped his arrows in the venom of the Hydra, just as wasps dip and sharpen their sting.”2

  Today, many people think of biological and chemical weapons as inventions that depend on modern technology, toxicology, and epidemiology. Yet, the idea of treating projectiles with noxious substances originated long ago in pre-scientific cultures, who observed that nature endowed certain plants with toxins to defend themselves and certain creatures with venom to hunt prey and kill enemies. Observation and experiment led to some simple—as well as some surprisingly sophisticated—ways of borrowing natural poisons for projectile weapons.

  A great variety of toxins—from wolfbane to snake venom—were weaponized as arrow poisons in antiquity. Snake venom may have been one of the first. In antiquity, the old myth of Hercules and the Hydra was thought to be a poetic exaggeration of the historical invention of arrows tipped with snake venom in the very deep past. Several authors, such as the historians Diodorus of Sicily (30 BC) and Pausanias (AD 150), and the poet Quintus of Smyrna (AD 350), assumed that Hercules’ arrows were actually “besmeared with deadly venom of the fell water snake” or an adder common in Greece. Pointing out that the ancient Greek word hydra meant water snake, Pausanias suggested that perhaps an extra-large hydra specimen had inspired the myth of the Hydra monster.

  Ancient toxicology treatises from the Mediterranean and India described an impressive array of poisonous plants, minerals, marine creatures, insects, and snakes, along with scores of antidotes and remedies, some useful and others quite dubious. In about 130 BC, for example, the toxicology manual compiled by Nicander, a priest of Apollo at the Temple of Claros in Asia Minor, listed twenty vipers and cobras known in the Greco-Roman world. Descriptions by Nicander and other writers often provide enough details for modern herpetologists to identify the species. Moreover, the medical symptoms of snakebites and arrow wounds contaminated by venom are accurately described in the ancient accounts. First, necrosis appears around the wound, with dark blue or black oozing gore, followed by putrid sores, hemorrhages, swelling limbs, vomiting, wracking pain, and “freezing pain around the heart,” culminating in convulsions, shock, and death. Only a very few lucky victims recovered from snake-venom bites or arrows, and sometimes the wounds festered for years, as described in the myth of Philoctetes.3

  An effective poison needs an effective delivery system, and the technology of the bow and arrow was perfectly suited for the task of killing with confidence from afar, whether the poisoned arrows were used for hunting or for combat. The first poison arrows were probably used for hunting, and later turned toward enemies in war. This progression, from hunting to war, is clear in the Greek mythology of poison arrows. Hercules’ great quiver held “some arrows for hunting and some for smiting foes.” And indeed, the first victims of the Hydra arrows were not humans, but a deer with golden horns, the Stymphalean Birds, and the half-man, half-horse Centaurs. Then, after Hercules’ death, the arrows were inherited by Philoctetes, who intended to use them in the war against Troy. But their use on the battlefield was delayed until the tenth and final year of the war, while Philoctetes was marooned on the desert island. Philoctetes used the poison arrows to hunt birds for food for a decade before slaughtering any Trojans.

  According to the Roman medical writer Celsus, hunters in Gaul (Celtic people of western Europe) used serpent venom to bring down game, because it did not poison the meat (snake venom is safely digestible). Mirko Grmek, a leading scholar of the history of medicine, and the classicist A. J. Reinach have suggested that the Greeks and Romans thought of poison arrows as essentially weapons for hunting, and therefore disapproved of their use against fellow humans. In fact, arrow poisons intended for hunting and those prepared for war differed in crucial ways.

  To be effective in hunting, the ideal toxin should be fast-acting and lethal even if the wound was slight, and poisons that ruined meat should be avoided. But war arrows were very different. The most malignant toxins were selected, with the deliberate intention of inflicting a horrible death or an incapacitating, unhealing wound. Pure snake venom might be used on hunting arrows, for example, but for combat the venom was contaminated with the most debilitating or disgusting ingredients for maximum physical and psychological impact. Killing cleanly and swiftly was not the point of poisoned military projectiles.

  Surprising the enemy with biochemical weapons was one option, but there were significant advantages to be had if your enemies knew that archers were shooting arrows coated in virulent substances. The armies that used poisoned arrows in war seem to have calculated the terror impact on potential enemies. They made sure that their recipes for treating war arrows promised a gruesome death, and that these formulas were well publicized. Just as today, deterrence was an important factor in creating biological weapons.4

  Looking first at the botanical options for arrow poisons, the ancients knew of at least two dozen dangerous plants that were used for medicinal purposes and could also be employed to create toxic weapons. As in modern pharmacology, the dosage drew the line between therapy and death. In very small amounts, many plant toxins are beneficial, while in larger amounts they are lethal—though some poisons, like aconite, can kill even in minute doses.

  Some substances mentioned by Greek and Roman historians, such as helenion and ninon, smeared on arrows by the Dacians and Dalmatians (ancient people of Romania, Hungary, and former Yugoslavia), have not been identified by modern scientists, but most of the arrow poisons used in the ancient world are well-known toxins. One of the most popular was hellebore, the all-purpose medicinal herb and the favorite prescription of doctors, including the father of medicine, Hippocrates. Two kinds of hellebore were identified by the ancients: black hellebore, the Christmas rose of the buttercup family (Helleborus orientalis), and white hellebore, a Liliacea (Veratrum). Interestingly, the plants are not related, but both are laden with dangerous chemicals so plentiful and diverse that it is surprising that anyone ever survived treatment. It was well known that hellebore killed horses and oxen, and people who collected hellebore sometimes fell ill or died. The plants were “not easy to gather, and very oppressive to the head,” noted Pliny the Elder, the natural historian of the first century AD. In tiny doses, the roots caused sneezing or blisters, but in heavier doses they induced
severe vomiting and diarrhea, muscle cramps, delirium, convulsions, asphyxia, and heart attack.

  It was the immediate purgative effect that made hellebore a pet prescription for all manner of complaints: it’s clear that some patients survived merely because the vomiting and diarrhea were so violent. As Pliny remarked, hellebore’s reputation evoked such “great terror” that treatment required much courage—on the part of both doctor and patient. Indeed, wrote Pliny, “the various colors of the vomits are terrifying to see, and after that comes the worry of watching the stools!”

  Hellebore was obviously an excellent choice for arrow poison. Ancient writers reported that hellebore was one of the “arrow drugs” used by the long-haired Gauls to hunt wild boars and other game. The hunters had to “run hastily” to cut away the flesh around the arrow before the poison sank in and the meat rotted, although the Gauls claimed that a small amount of hellebore tenderized the flesh of hares and deer. Today, traditional hunters in Tanzania, who use the plant poison panjupe on their arrows, also rush to pull out the arrow and discard the meat around the wound.

  The fact that the Gauls knew of at least two antidotes for hellebore poisoning suggests that they worried about self-inflicted injuries from hellebore arrows. The act of collecting of hellebore and many other baneful plants in antiquity was surrounded by special rituals to avoid accidental poisoning, and the preparations of arrow drugs were time-consuming and delicate. To dig up hellebore, for example, one first prayed facing east, then incised a circle around the plant with a sword, all the while keeping an eye out for an eagle—to spot one spelled death for the herbalist.5