Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs

by Adrienne Mayor

  The principle of summoning plague for self-defense may be related to the reality that invaders are “immunologically naive” and therefore more vulnerable to endemic diseases in foreign lands than the local population. Simply put, epidemics often strike invading forces more severely than indigenous populations. But, another factor appears to be a strong intuition from earliest times that poisoning and spreading contagion could be justified when it was reserved for desperate emergencies. This principle allowed the practice of polluting water in advance of an invading army or booby-trapping an abandoned outpost. The same defensive principle appears in the modern Biological Weapons Convention (ratified in 1972 by 143 nations), which prohibits offensive weapons but allows “defensive” research to continue.

  Various military leaders in modern history have hesitated to approve biochemical weapons for aggressive purposes. Louis XIV, for example, rewarded an Italian chemist for inventing a bacteriological weapon, but on the condition that the man never reveal the formula, and, in a similar account, Louis V declined an offer of the “lost” formula for Greek Fire. In 1969, President Richard Nixon supposedly terminated the offensive biological weapons initiative that the United States had begun in World War II. Even Hitler, a fan of Greco-Roman culture, reportedly forbade offensive biological weapons research in 1939, although his scientists continued to develop nerve gases and other bio-chemical agents. Of course, there have been, and still are, countless systematic violations of bans against offensive uses of weaponized contagion. For example, many modern nations simply label bio-weapons research and production as “defensive security,” even though nothing precludes the weapons from being used in a first strike. The salient point in these ancient accounts, though, is the surprising antiquity of the attitude that there is something heinous about attacking with contagion, but as a weapon of resistance, self-defense, or retaliation, it is acceptable as a last resort.18

  In AD 165, the Syrians and others accused the Romans of intentionally spreading the plague and taking it back to Rome. But the Romans themselves were the main victims of the epidemic. Even Emperor Marcus Aurelius succumbed to the plague—despite his daily dose of a special antidote to protect himself from biological attack. It seems more likely that the Romans were the victims of a biological timebomb, a kind of booby-trapped Pandora’s box, set against the invader, activated despite the dangers of friendly fire (the Parthians were also affected). If so, the chest in the temple may have been a very early precursor of the booby-trapped treasure chests in the late Middle Ages that were rigged with primitive explosives. In this case, trying to direct contagion only at the Roman enemy, without incurring collateral damage, must have been seen as a drastic last resort.

  Imagine the scene at the Temple of Long-Haired Apollo, god of plague, in Babylon. Lucius Verus’s generals are laying waste to Babylonia, and Cassius has utterly destroyed the friendly Greek city of Seleuceia. Roman soldiers burst into the temple, looking for loot before setting it afire. They spy the golden casket, and the priests of Apollo allow the biologically devastating “accident” to happen, knowing that at least the Roman army will contract the plague and spread it across their provinces all the way back to Italy. As Faraone points out, soldiers far from home and living in crowded conditions were “excellent targets for a variety of new viruses and bacteria for which they had no immunity.”

  The plague of AD 165-180 has been identified as smallpox, based on Galen’s description. Some of the local populace may have been immune to the pestilence stored in their temple, but the dangers of keeping plague as a secret weapon inside one’s own city would be considerable. Just as those who handled poison arrows and toxic substances suffered friendly-fire accidents, handling contagion always involves the chance of self-contamination.

  Indeed, the backlash problems associated with handling contagion as a weapon persist in modern times. A prime example of the “poisoners poisoned” effect occurred in 1941, during Japanese attacks with infectious agents against eleven cities in China. The Japanese troops themselves are reported to have suffered 10,000 biological casualties and 1,700 fatalities trying to spread contagion in the city of Changteh alone. In grim irony, Dr. Shiro Ishii, the director of attacks, became a casualty of his obsession with germ warfare: he suffered from chronic dysentery. During the offensive bioweapons research program in the United States in 1943-69, there were reports of more than four hundred inadvertent “occupational infections,” and since the 1950s, military experiments with germ warfare agents have been linked to several outbreaks of disease in civilian populations. After smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, routine vaccinations were halted and laboratories around the world supposedly destroyed their stores of the virus (except for two authorized sites in the United States and the Soviet Union). But in 2002, evidence emerged that Russia may have continued to create staggering amounts of the virus and that vials of smallpox strains (rumored to be resistant to vaccines) lurk in lab freezers across the globe. The perilous situation is chronicled in Richard Preston’s 2002 book, The Demon in the Freezer, a striking title that calls to mind the ancient plague demons trapped in stoppered vials in temples.

  Ancient recognition of the danger of trying to weaponize plague is evident in traditional Greek prayers urging Apollo to set aside his bow and quiver of plague-arrows during peacetime. And an ancient Hittite prayer bluntly requested their own plague-bringing god to “Shoot the enemy, but when you come home, unstring your bow and cover your quiver.”19

  The biological sabotage that I have suggested may have been planned by the priests at the temples at Babylon, and perhaps Jerusalem, took advantage of the invading enemies’ greed and lust for loot. The contagion was delivered in the form of something attractive. Indeed, the next chapter shows how military commanders could take advantage of adversaries’ desires, vices, or overindulgence, but before we turn to toxic sweets and tainted wine as weapons, let’s consider another unique subterfuge that concealed doom in an alluring gift.

  In India, where all manner of toxic substances could be had, poisoning was a favored method of political assassination in myth and history. One of the most ingenious methods described in Sanskrit literature was to send an irresistible gift in the form of a so-called Poison Maiden. In the Katha Sarit Sagara, a collection of Indian lore compiled by the poet Somadeva (about AD 1050), King Brahmadatta “sent poison-damsels as dancing-girls among the enemy’s host.” In an ancient twist on the modern idea of “sleepers,” the term for undetected, lurking assassins or terrorists who await orders to kill, Poison Maidens were carefully “prepared” and dispatched as secret weapons. A touch, a kiss, or sexual intercourse with one of these ravishing but deadly damsels brought sure death.

  The idea that certain individuals were personally poisonous, capable of killing with their mere touch or breath, is a folk motif of great antiquity. According to popular belief, one way that the toxicity could be achieved was by a lifelong regimen of ingesting poisons and venoms. (Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” about a Poison Maiden, and the Poison Sultan Mahmud Shah are two famous examples of the theme in Western and Indian-Persian folklore). The tales reflect folk knowledge of gaining immunity to venoms (exemplified by the Psylli, the snake charmers of North Africa), but they also were early attempts to explain how contagion is mysteriously passed from person to person.

  According to ancient Indian and Arabic legends, both King Chandragupta and his Greek rival Alexander the Great were the intended victims of Poison Maidens. King Chandragupta’s Mauryan Empire was the most powerful dominion in India when Alexander invaded in 327 BC and defeated the king’s ally, Porus. In the seventh century AD, the historian Visakhadatta described how a plot to send a Poison Maiden to the king’s bedchamber was thwarted by Kautilya, Chandragupta’s minister and the author of the Arthashastra, the book of Machiavellian statecraft. Kautilya cleverly rerouted the girl to one of the king’s enemies instead.

  A similar intrigue was said to have been hatched to kill A
lexander the Great, according to a body of ancient and medieval legends. The earliest description of the conspiracy to send a Poison Maiden to the Macedonian conqueror appeared in about AD 1050 in a Latin book, based on an earlier Arabic translation of a lost Greek manuscript. In that story, the King of India sent Alexander many precious gifts, among them a “beautiful maiden whom they had fed on poison until she had the nature of a venomous snake.” Smitten by her beauty, Alexander “could scarcely contain himself and rushed to embrace her.” Her touch or bite, even her perspiration, it was said, would have killed Alexander—had not his trusted advisor, the philosopher Aristotle, foiled the plot and prevented him from contact with the “messenger of death.”

  The story of Alexander is clearly legendary (for one thing, Aristotle never visited India). But the concept of a Poison Maiden may contain a germ of truth. Comparing the beautiful girls to snakes plays on the idea that snake charmers gained immunity by ingesting small doses of venom, and as folklorist Norman Penzer points out, there was a popular notion in antiquity that the bite of a snake charmer might be as venomous as the snakes they handled. Penzer also investigated the possibility that the “poison” transmitted by intimate contact with deadly maidens was really venereal disease or other fatal infectious illnesses, such as smallpox, transmitted by personal contact.

  The strategy of sending disease-ridden but alluring women to foes appeared again in later military history, too. During the Naples Campaign of 1494, for example, the Spanish not only poisoned French wine with contaminated blood, but according to the medical writer Gabriele Falloppia, they also “intentionally chased beautiful, infectious prostitutes into the French army camp.”20 Although the biological strategies are nearly three thousand years apart, this Spanish “poison prostitute” plot also has parallels to the ancient Hittite ritual of driving a plague-infected woman into enemy territory. Offering something tempting but lethal to a foe is an age-old path to victory via biological agents.

  5

  SWEET SABOTAGE

  Men by their unbridled appetites

  are the victims of plots against

  their food and drink.

  —AELIAN, On Animals

  He’ll come with a deadly poison,

  pour it in our wine, and kill us all.

  —HOMER, Odyssey

  XENOPHON WAS PLEASED with the campsite he had selected in the territory of Colchis in Pontus, along the southeastern shore of the Black Sea. The land was fertile and well-watered. It was 401 BC, and the great general was leading ten thousand Greek mercenaries on the long march home from Babylon, north through Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Asia Minor. The hoplites had fought with distinction in the attempted coup d’état by the Persian rebel Cyrus the Younger against the grand army of his brother, Artaxerxes II, king of Persia. But when Cyrus was killed by Artaxerxes’ men in the battle of Cunaxa (near modern Baghdad), the cause was lost. The Persians had invited the Greek generals to negotiate. At the supposedly friendly banquet, however, all the generals were assassinated and the Greek army was left stranded in a precarious situation with no leaders, thousands of miles from home.

  Xenophon emerged from the ranks as their new leader. The murder of the Greek generals and his knowledge of Persian history made Xenophon exquisitely aware of treachery, but even he was unprepared for what happened in Colchis, the homeland of the legendary sorceress Medea and her magic potions and poisons.

  Xenophon always followed his own advice to military leaders, “Above all, camp in a healthy place.” His men had battled natives and plundered towns for supplies all along the march from Babylon. Here, in Colchis, it seemed safe for the ten thousand homesick soldiers to rest and dream of soon reaching Greece. “There was nothing remarkable about the place,” wrote Xenophon in his memoir of the expedition, “except for extraordinary numbers of swarming bees.” The Colchian villages were well-stocked with food and there was even the special treat of wild honey for the taking. The men soon discovered the beehives and raided them for the sweet.

  After feasting on the honey, however, the soldiers “succumbed to a strange affliction,” and began to act like intoxicated madmen. Soon they were staggering about and collapsing by the thousands. Xenophon reported that his troops were sprawled over the ground like victims of a terrible rout. As though under a spell, the men were totally incapacitated. Some even died. A “great despondency prevailed,” wrote Xenophon. The next day, the survivors began to recover their senses but were unable to stand until three or four days later. Still feeling weak, the army broke camp and continued west. The vulnerability of his men to an ambush in enemy territory while they were unconscious greatly troubled Xenophon.

  Unknown to Xenophon, the culprit in this situation was naturally toxic honey, produced by bees that collected nectar from poisonous rhododendron blossoms. The powerful neurotoxins of the flowers have no effect on the bees, but the inhabitants of the Black Sea region knew all about the beautiful but baneful rhododendron plant. Its sap could be used as an arrow poison, and in very tiny doses the honey was a pharmakon, taken as a tonic or mild intoxicant. Today in northern Turkey and the Caucasus, the honey is called deli bal (“mad honey”) and known to Westerners as miel fou. A small spoonful in a glass of milk is a traditional pick-me-up, and a dollop in alcoholic beverages gives an extra kick. In the eighteenth century, deli bal was a major export from the Crimea, and tons of toxic honey were shipped to Europe to be added to drinks sold in taverns.

  Strangers unfamiliar with the delicious honey made from poison flowers are liable to overdose, like Xenophon’s soldiers who eagerly devoured the honeycombs. I interviewed an American anthropology student who barely survived a bout with toxic honey in the 1970s, in Nepal, where great rhododendron forests thrive. His hosts, nomadic yak herders, had warned him about the dangers of wild honey, and told him how to distinguish toxic from safe honey—one method is to hold a handful: a tingling sensation indicates toxicity. But the student also knew that the herders purposely gathered the toxic honey. Assuming that it was a hallucinogenic drug, he sought out a hive in the rhododendron forest, identified the toxic honey, and ate an ounce or so. The high began pleasantly enough, he recalled, but soon turned ferocious. Tingling and numbness progressed to vertigo, severe vomiting, and diarrhea. His speech became garbled and the psychedelic visual effects were frightening, with whirling colored lights and tunnel vision. Delirious, he was able to reach the village just before muscle paralysis caused complete collapse. The villagers nursed him back from near death. A few days later, following the same course of recovery experienced by Xenophon’s men, the student was still weak, but able to stand. Later, he learned that the herders fed tiny doses to their livestock as a spring tonic. They told him the amount he had ingested was enough to kill a huge Tibetan mastiff.

  By Roman times, the “mad” honey of the Black Sea area was well-known to natural historians. Pliny the Elder mused on the paradox that the “sweetest, finest, most health-promoting food” could be so randomly lethal. Noting that nature had already armed bees with venomous stings, Pliny surmised that the bees borrowed the toxins from poisonous plants to create an additional weapon, one intended to protect their honeycombs from human greed.

  Xenophon’s close call was due to accidental poisoning, but it was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to use the honey as a biological weapon. As John Ambrose, a historian of insects in warfare, commented, the ancients “were clever enough to realize that the honey . . . could have a military usage not unlike that of poison gas today.” Honey was just one of many attractive lures that could serve as a secret biological weapon to disable or kill enemies in antiquity. Fears of biotoxins inspired the search for antidotes and immunities, which were themselves sometimes based on poisons.1

  Four centuries after Xenophon’s experience with toxic honey, a Roman army marched through the same region, in about 65 BC. They too feasted on the delicious honey of the Pontus, this time with fatal consequences. The commander of the army was Pompey the Gre
at, attempting to complete the long campaign to conquer Rome’s most dangerous enemy in the first century BC, the brilliant King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Mithridates’ colossal army—much feared for its hellish war-chariots with rotating scythes attached to the wheels—had swept across Asia, slaughtering tens of thousands of Romans. He had captured Greece, and was poised to attack Italy (89-85 BC). Pompey’s predecessor, Licinius Lucullus, had failed to finish the war against the elusive Mithridates in an arduous campaign of 74-66 BC, despite victories from Pontus to Mesopotamia. Pompey’s legions finally defeated Mithridates’ grand army in 65 BC, but the wily king slipped away over the Caucasus to Crimea, and began to plan an audacious land invasion of Italy.

  Mithridates was a ruler obsessed with a phobia of assassination by poison, and with good reason: he had murdered his own mother, his brother, his four sons, and many others, and poison was a favorite weapon in his milieu. A team of Scythian shaman-doctors, called the Agari, accompanied Mithridates at all times. Famed for their healing potions made from various snake venoms, the Scythian shamans had cured several grave arrow wounds suffered by the king. (The paranoid monarch’s sleep was guarded by a bull, a horse, and a stag, who alerted him with a three-alarm cacophony—bellowing, whinnying, and bleating—whenever someone approached the royal bed.)

  FIGURE 20. King Mithridates VI of Pontus, arch-enemy of Rome, was a toxicologist searching for the most effective poisons and their antidotes. Here, he tests a poison on a prisoner, while his royal pharmacists display aconite and other toxic plants. Painting by Robert Thom.