Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs

by Adrienne Mayor

  The Scythians told Herodotus that Hercules’ belt had a buckle of unusual design. The tongue of the buckle was in the form of a little gold vial. And “to this day the Scythians wear belts with little gold cups attached,” remarked Herodotus. Herodotus, who was apparently unaware of the Scythians’ use of poison arrows, did not speculate on the purpose of the belt. Why would the buckle be fitted with a little cup? I think that the cryptic passage in Herodotus can be explained by the nomads’ reliance on toxic arrows. It seems logical that the gold container held the infamous scythicon—literally, “Scythian toxin”—the substance the Scythians used for poisoning their arrows. Pure gold would be unaffected by contact with poison. Recalling the Choco method of gathering frog poison in a bottle for dipping, one can imagine that it would be efficient before a battle to dip one’s arrows into a vial of scythicon at one’s waist. It is interesting that in several early vase paintings of Hercules killing the Hydra, the goddess Athena is shown holding out a vial with a narrow opening to catch the Hydra’s venom.

  The Scythians also invented a special combination bow case-quiver, called a gorytus. Artistic representations of these cases on vase paintings and gold artifacts—as well as actual bow cases excavated from fifth-century BC Scythian tombs—show the ingenious design of the case. The gorytus hung from a belt and had two separate compartments: one held the bow and the other was a pocket for arrows that could be tightly closed with a flap. Each Scythian archer carried two of these cases. This practice and the unique design of the quiver guaranteed that bows and arrows of various sizes and types were at hand for any hunting or battle situation, and the safety flap helped prevent contact with the razor-sharp, poisoned points.

  FIGURE 10. Right, Scythian archer shooting poison arrows at Greek hoplites. Left, running Scythian archer with bow, arrow, and quiver, about 500 BC.

  (© The British Museum)

  As recently as the 1970s, the Akamba tribe of Kenya (mentioned earlier) carried their poisoned arrows in a similarly combined bow case-quiver of smoked leather, fitted with a cap to prevent scratches from the points. The Akamba followed further precautions to avoid the perils of handling poison arrows. Not only did the arrows have very small, sharp retractable metal tips to carry the toxin, but the points were wrapped in leather to keep the poison moist and to prevent accidental injury. It is possible that this was also done in antiquity.

  Going into battle, the Scythians may have stored pre-coated arrows in the special safety pocket of the gorytus. But when hunting or during a sniping ambush, an archer could dunk an arrow in scythicon in the cup or vial on his special belt just before shooting it. This practice would help avoid the kind of nightmarish accident that befell Philoctetes when he was carrying Hercules’ quiver of arrows.12

  The most blood-curdling ingredient of the dreaded scythicon was viper venom. Scythian territory is home to several poisonous snake species: the steppe viper, Vipera ursinii renardi; the Caucasus viper, Vipera kasnakovi; the European adder, Vipera berus; and the long-nosed or sand viper, Vipera ammodytes transcaucasiana. Simply dipping an arrow in one of these venoms would create a death-dealing projectile, since even dried snake venom retains its neurotoxic effect for a long time (herpetologists working with snake skeletons have suffered envenomation by accidentally puncturing themselves with the fangs of dried-out snake skulls). But the Scythians went much further in manufacturing their war arrows.

  The complex recipe for scythicon can be reconstructed from statements attributed to Aristotle; from fragments of a lost work by the natural philosopher Theophrastus (fourth century BC); and from the formula given by Aelian. Since psychological terror is a chief aspect of bio-war, the method for brewing the poison and its nauseating ingredients were probably gleefully recounted by the Scythian archers serving with the Athenian army in the fifth century BC.

  First, the Scythians killed poisonous vipers just after they had given birth, perhaps because the snakes were sluggish then and easily caught. (Most vipers, also called adders, give birth to live young.) Then, the bodies were set aside to decompose. The next step required very specialized knowledge, and because shamans were important figures in Scythian culture and the keepers of arcane knowledge, they probably oversaw the complicated preparation of the poison, which required several ingredients. One was taken from humans. “The Scythians,” Aelian wrote, “even mix serum from the human body with the poison that they smear upon their arrows.” According to Aristotle and Aelian, the Scythians knew a means of “agitating” the blood to separate the plasma, the “watery secretion that somehow floats on the surface of the blood.” Theophrastus is cited as the source for this remarkable forerunner of modern blood-plasma separating technology, but unfortunately the full description of the technique is lost.13

  The human blood serum was then mixed with animal dung in leather bags and buried in the ground until the mixture putrefied. Dung or human feces itself would be a simple but very effective biotoxin for poisoning weapons, and even without an understanding of modern germ theories, experience would have taught the dangers of dung-contaminated wounds. As the historian Plutarch remarked in the first century BC, “creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of excrement.” Excrement is loaded with bacteria that can cause morbid infections. The “pungee sticks” deployed by the Vietcong against U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War are a modern example of the use of feces on sharp weapons intended to inflict deep, septic wounds.

  In the third step, the Scythians mixed the dung and serum with the venom and matter from the decomposed vipers. The stench must have been powerful. A comment by Strabo, who was a native of the Black Sea region, confirms this. The Soanes, a Scythian tribe of the Caucasus Mountains near the Black Sea, “used remarkable poisons for the points of their missiles,” he wrote. “Even people who are not wounded by the poison projectiles suffer from their terrible odor.” The reek of poisoned arrows may have been an intentional feature, an ancient version of modern “stench weapons” designed by military chemists to be “psychologically toxic” to victims.

  Scythian arrow poison was obviously not intended for hunting animals. The laborious process of contaminating putrid venomous snakes with blood and feces created a bacteriological weapon clearly meant only for human enemies, since no one would eat game tainted by such toxins. As Renate Rolle, an expert on the ancient Scythians, has stated, the result was “a pernicious poison” calculated to cause agonizing death or long-term damage, since “even slight wounds were likely to prove fatal.”

  Likely indeed: putrefied human blood and animal feces contain bacteria that cause tetanus and gangrene, while the rotting vipers would contribute further bacterial contaminants to wreak havoc in a puncture wound. Rolle consulted Steffen Berg, a forensic physician, who theorized that the poison delivered by a Scythian arrow would probably take effect within an hour. As the victim’s blood cells disintegrated, shock would ensue. Even if the victim survived shock, gangrene would set in after a day or two. The gangrene would bring severe suppuration and black oozing of the wound, just as described in the ancient myths of envenomed wounds on the battlefield at Troy. A few days later, a tetanus infection would probably be fatal. Even if a victim miraculously survived all these onslaughts, he would be incapacitated for the rest of his life, like Philoctetes and Telephus in the Greek myths, by an ever-festering wound.14

  And as if the horrific effects of the poison were not enough, archaeological evidence reveals that Scythian arrowsmiths added yet another feature to their airborne weapons: hooks or barbs. Deploring the odious Scythian missiles for their “promise of a double death,” the Roman poet Ovid described how victims were “pitifully shot down by hooked arrows” with “poisonous juices clinging to the flying metal.” Poison arrows with ingeniously designed breakaway barbs had decimated a Roman army facing mounted archers in Armenia in 68 BC, according to the historian Dio Cassius.

  “In order to render the wound even nastier and the removal of the arrow more difficult,” w
rites Rolle, thorns were affixed to the arrowheads, and others were barbed or hinged. Even a superficially lodged barbed arrow would be extremely tricky and painful to pull out. Projectiles “fitted with hooks and soaked in poison were particularly feared,” notes Rolle. Such weapons modified to inflict more injury and pain than conventional arms aroused moral disapproval among Greeks and Romans, who conveniently ignored their own legacy of biological weapons. Interestingly, the ancient criticism of weapons specifically designed to intensify suffering foreshadows modern war protocols that prohibit projectiles that cause “superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”15

  So, the Scythians not only formulated their own extremely potent toxin and figured out how to increase damage by adding barbs to arrows shot from technologically advanced bows, they also invented ways of safely handling their hazardous ammunition with their quiver and belt designs. But it seems their creativity did not stop there.

  In the 1940s, the Soviet archaeologist Sergei Rudenko was the first to excavate several tombs of Scythian warriors, from the permafrost of the Russian steppes. The tombs, dating to the fifth century BC, were filled with equipment, weapons, and artifacts, many of which were accurately described more than two thousand years ago by Herodotus. Gold, wood, leather, wool and silk, metal, and even the mummified bodies of tattooed warriors, were unearthed from the frozen mud, which Rudenko thawed with boiling water. Since Rudenko, other Russian and American archaeologists have excavated more tombs containing male and female warriors and a wealth of artifacts. So far, nothing matching the little gold cup buckles mentioned by Herodotus has been found in the burials, but many bow case-quivers and arrowheads carved from antler, horn, and bone, and cast in bronze have come to light. Wooden artifacts are rare in most archaeological sites, but the Russian permafrost preserved quantities of wooden arrow shafts in excellent condition, with the vivid colors of paint still visible. And, here, an additional aspect of Scythian creativity comes to light.

  Many of the shafts (they were about thirty inches long) were painted solid red or black, while others had red and black wavy lines and zigzags. Rudenko illustrated numerous examples of these arrow shafts in his book, The Frozen Tombs of Siberia, but no scholars have commented on the curious decorations. Our knowledge that the Scythians treated their arrowheads with snake venom, however, leads to an intriguing idea. Were the striking designs inspired by patterns on the skins of snakes? Most poisonous vipers have zigzag or diamond patterns. The Caucasian viper, for example, has a serrated black stripe along its red body, and Vipera berus has bold zigzags.16

  FIGURE 11. Top, wooden arrow shafts for snake-venom arrows, painted with red and black designs, found in fifth-century BC Scythian tombs. After Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia. Bottom, the venom of the poisonous European adder, Vipera berus, may have been used by the Scythians to treat their arrows.

  The designs may have been intended to magically empower the envenomed arrows, or they could have been a psychological device aimed at demoralizing the enemy. By painting the shafts to resemble much-feared vipers and affixing arrows with barbs that replicated fangs dripping poison, the Scythians transformed their arrows into the equivalent of flying snakes. “Snake-arrows” zinging through the air certainly would strike fear into the hearts of victims. The effect would be especially harrowing when a warrior impaled by “a bitter-biting arrow” saw that its shaft carried the patterns of a deadly viper.

  The painted markings might have also designated different arrow types for the archer. Quintus of Smyrna commented that Philoctetes carried two different sorts of poison arrows in his quiver, some for hunting and others for killing foes, and many cultures around the world use different types of toxic arrows for war and hunting. Perhaps a certain design indicated an arrow coated with pure snake venom to be used for hunting game, while another design indicated arrows tipped with the bacterially enhanced and labor-intensive scythicon to be used for battles. Plain shafts may have been used for unpoisoned arrows, to serve for target practice and the many contests the nomads held to show off their skills.

  Scythian archers’ accuracy and range were phenomenal, even on horseback. Archaeologists have discovered skulls of their victims with arrowheads embedded right between the eyes. Pliny wrote that these nomads were so skilled that they actually used their arrows to dislodge valuable green turquoise gems in the rocks of “inaccessible icy crags” of the Caucasus. From an ancient inscription at Olbia on the Black Sea, we know that a Scythian archer named Anaxagoras won a prize for long-distance shooting. His arrow traveled 1,640 feet (500 meters), far exceeding the average range of an ancient Greek bow, estimated at 900 feet (250-300 meters).

  Facing a horde of mounted Scythian warriors was surely a hair-raising experience. The battle would begin with a hail of hideously poisoned arrows blotting out the sun, as each Scythian archer shot about twenty shafts a minute.17 And the soldiers, crouching behind their shields, had heard all about the dire effects of scythicon. In virulence and the ability to inspire terror in the ancient world, only the poison arrows of India could rival the Scythians’ flying vipers.

  India, marveled the ancient writers, was fabulously rich in drugs and deadly plants, and infested with noxious reptiles. (For the ancients, “India” meant the lands east of Persia, from Pakistan to Southeast Asia.) Poison weapons could be made from a wealth of nefarious substances, from aconite to bug guts to cobra venom. In the fourth century BC, Alexander the Great’s men faced many daunting and marvelous dangers as they marched through India—nearly impassable mountains, strange valleys whose vapors killed birds, weird poisonous plants, scorching heat and thirst, monsoons, deadly serpents of colossal size, and new and bizarre weapons in the form of Indian war elephants—but the worst were the snake-venom arrows.

  One of the most feared poisons of India was obtained from the so-called Purple Snake of the “hottest regions” According to Aelian, this snake was short, with a deep purple or maroon body and a head as white as milk or snow. It seemed “almost tame” and did not strike with fangs, but if it “vomited” on a victim, the entire limb putrefied and death was usually quick, although some victims wasted away over several years, “dying little by little.”

  The Purple Snake has never been identified by modern herpetologists. When I contacted Aaron Bauer, who has studied reptiles in Asia, about Aelian’s description, he was struck by two details, the remarkable white head and the habitat in the “hottest part of Asia.” If Aelian’s account came third- or fourth-hand from Southeast Asia, suggested Bauer, the Purple Snake may refer to the rare, white-headed viper that was unknown to science until the late 1880s, Azemiops feae. This viper is the only tropical Asian venomous snake with a distinctive white head. The short and stout body is dark blue-black with red marks and looks purplish, especially as the scales reflect light or if a preserved specimen is observed. This primitive viper has relatively short fangs and small venom sacs. Described by herpetologists as “docile but dangerous,” the white-headed viper is found in modern Tibet, China, Burma, and Vietnam. The lack of fangs and disastrous result of “vomiting” on a victim described by Aelian probably referred to venom that accidentally dripped into an open sore. The venom of Azemiops has not been fully analyzed, but the “long-term effects would be devastating with significant necrosis.”

  FIGURE 12. The dreaded Purple Snake of India, as described by Aelian and Ctesias, had a distinctive white head. It may have been the poisonous Azemiops feae, discovered by scientists in the late 1800s.

  (Photo © R. W. Murphy)

  Collecting the toxin of the Purple Snake was difficult and dangerous, Aelian recounted. To extract the venom, the Indians suspended the reptile alive and head down over a bronze pot to catch the dripping poison, which congealed and set into a thick amber-colored gum. When the snake eventually died, the first pot was replaced with another to catch the watery serum flowing from the carcass. After three days, this foul liquid jelled into a deep black substance. The two poisons of the Purple Snake were kept separa
te, as they killed in different ways, both dreadful. The black poison caused a lingering, wasting death over years, from spreading necrosis and suppurating wounds. The amber poison (the pure venom) caused violent convulsions, and then the victim’s “brain dissolves and drips out his nostrils and he dies a most pitiable death.”18

  Feeling queasy? That reaction was exactly the intention of poison arrow makers in Scythia and India. Just dipping arrows in pure venom would be deadly enough. But soaking war arrows in the most grotesque poisons and broadcasting the horrid recipes to potential enemies was an important psychological aspect of biological warfare. The very idea of facing archers supplied with scythicon or Purple Snake poison was terrifying.

  When Alexander the Great and his army advanced over the Khyber Pass from Afghanistan into Punjab in 327-25 BC, India was still an unknown land of fabled wonders. The Greek veterans brought back more accurate information about the natural history of India, along with some tales that defied belief. In a decisive battle on the Hydapses River in northern India, Alexander’s soldiers were astounded by the sight of the giant King Porus atop his huge elephant. This was the first time the Greeks had encountered war elephants in action, but Alexander’s army managed to defeat Porus by hemming in the elephants and shooting the mahouts (drivers) who controlled them.

  After that victory, many cities and kingdoms acquiesced to Alexander, but others still resisted. It was Alexander’s dream to push eastward to the Ganges River and thence to the ocean, but his troops were exhausted by the long campaign so far from home and dispirited by rumors of invincible armies led by King Chandragupta of the Mauryan Empire in northeast India. Demoralized by the drenching monsoons and the strange deadly plants and terrible serpents of India, the Greeks mutinied and refused to advance.