7 Homer, Iliad 2.725-39. That Philoctetes’ ships were rowed by archers was considered historical by the fifth-century BC Greek historian Thucydides 1.10. Gantz 1993, 1:459-60; 2:589-90, 625-28, 635-38, 700-701 surveys the Philoctetes stories in literature and art. Apollodorus, Epitome 3.26-27, 5.8-10, and see Frazer’s note 2, 2:194-97, and note 1, 2:222-23. See Sophocles’ play Philoctetes (409 BC); Euripides, Aeschylus, and two other playwrights also wrote Philoctetes tragedies, now lost. Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 9.334-480. Philoctetes’ suffering was depicted in vase paintings and other art works, with the earliest known art dating to 460 BC. The shrine to Philoctetes on Chryse could be visited through the first century AD, but in about AD 150, the island was submerged by earthquakes. Appian, “Mithridatic Wars” 12.77; Pausanias 8.33.4. Scarborough 1977, 7, 9.
8 Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 3.58-82 and 148-50; 9.353-546. Ovid, Metamorphoses 12.596-628.
9 On the ideal of fighting up close, not “at long range” (i.e., with arrows), in the “front ranks for action and for honor,” and avoiding blows “from behind on nape or back, but [taking them] in the chest or belly as you wade into . . . the battle line,” see, e.g., Homer, Iliad 8.94f; 12.42; 13.260-300; 16.791, 806f. See Salazar 2000, 156-57, for a good discussion of the criticism of archers and the ideals of fighting face-to-face and avoiding wounds in the back. On ancient negative opinions about projectiles in war, see Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “archers.” The bow and arrow as “unheroic weapon”: Faraone 1992, 125.
10 Virgil, Aeneid 9.770-74. Philoctetes after Troy and his last years: Gantz 1993, 2:700-701. Philoctetes’ dedication of the weapons: Euphorion cited by Apollodorus, Epitome 6.15b; Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard 107 (115), says that Philoctetes dedicated the weapons in the Temple of Apollo at Macalla, near Krimissa, and that the citizens of Croton later transferred them to their own temple of Apollo. Ancient vases, coins, gems, and sculptures depicted Philoctetes receiving Hercules’ quiver, wounded and abandoned, taking arrows from his quiver, shooting birds, fanning flies from his unhealing wound, shooting Paris, and so on.
11 Homer, Odyssey 2.235-30; 1.252-66. On the moral and historic meaning of this passage, see Dirlmeier 1966. Gantz 1993, 2:711-13; 732 (Circe). Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.406-25 (Cerberus), 14.41-68, 264-302 (Circe). Birds killed by fumes: Pliny 4.2. The stingray spear was made by Hephaestus, at Circe’s request. The ray, perhaps a marbled blue stingray common in the Mediterranean, had been killed by Phorkys, a Triton, and the thorny, serrated spine was forged onto a shaft inlaid with adamantine and gold. See chapter 2 for evidence of the actual use of stingray spines as weapons.
12 Sophocles, Trachinian Women 573-74. The paradoxical figure of Hercules is discussed by Faraone 1992, 59.
13 The “poisoner poisoned” folk motif is a widespread and ancient theme: for examples see the standard folklore reference work, Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, motifs K1613. The reason for the deaths at Bari was covered up by the U.S. military: Harris and Paxman 1982, 77-79, 119-25. The U.S. troops’ health problems have also been attributed in part to vaccinations against biochemical arms in 1991. On the origins of Iraq’s biological weapons, see note 4, chapter 5, and Shenon 2003.
14 Faraone 1992, 125 on combined plague and fire imagery. Poisons and incendiaries combined: see chapter 7 and Partington 1999, 149, 209-11, 271, 273, 284-85.
15 Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 9.386-89. On Greek atrocities during the sack of Troy see Gantz 1993, 2:650-57; for ancient sources, see note 3 in chapter 3. Painting on the Acropolis: Pausanias 1.22.4. Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.170-204; and Ovid, Tristia.
Chapter 2
1 Galen (second century AD) cited in Scarborough 1977, 3 and note 1. See Scarborough’s discussion of the ancient dread of venomous snakes and the many Greek and Roman treatises on plant and animal poisons and antidotes, some effective and some bizarre. Homer, Iliad 3.35-47.
2 Aelian, On Animals 9.40, 1.54, 5.16, 9.15. Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard 844 b 80 (140), claims that wasps that have feasted on poisonous adder’s flesh have a sting worse than the adder’s bite.
3 Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 9.392-97. Pausanias 2.37.4. Diodorus of Sicily 4.38. On symptoms of snakebites and Nicander, see Scarborough 1977, 6-9. Dipsas, seps, aspis, kerastes, and echis are a few of the names for Viperidae in ancient texts. Vipera ammodytes, Cerastes species, Vipera berus, and Echis carinata are some of the poisonous snakes known to Greeks and Romans.
4 Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 9.392-97. Hercules shooting the deer, the Centaurs, and the man-eating Stymphalean birds: Gantz 1993, 1:387-88; 390-92, 394. According to Grmek 1979, 143, and Reinach 1909, 56, classical Greek authors felt that using weapons intended for hunting animals in battles with men was an odious practice, rather than an acceptable military stratagem. This attitude explains why Homer had King Ilus refuse to give Odysseus poison for “murdering men.” See Lesho et al. 1998, 512, on the psychological terror of biological projectiles.
5 Galen and Paul of Aegina referred to Dacian and Dalmatian arrow poisons, Salazar 2000, 28. Hellebore: Majno 1991, 147, 188-93. Pliny 25.47-61. Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard 837 a 10 (86). Hadzabe tribe of Tanzania: Martin 2001. For a survey of Celtic and other ancient arrow poisons and antidotes, see Reinach 1909.
6 Ovid, Metamorphoses 7, origin of aconite. Aelian, On Animals 9.18, 4.49. Pliny 6.4 (the town of Aconae on the Black Sea was of “evil repute for the poison called aconite”); 8.100; 22.18 (nature’s weapons); 27.4-10; for antidotes see 20.132; 23.43, 92, 135; 25.163; 28.161; 29.74, 105. Aconite in India: Penzer 1952, 11. Moors and aconite: Partington 1999, 231 note 103. Aconite bullets: Harris and Paxman 1982, 61. On septic bullets, see Wheelis 1999, 34. Henbane: Aelian, On Animals 9.32. Pliny 23.94; 25.35-37. See also Majno 1991, 387.
7 Poison-arrow frogs: Lori Hamlett, Nashville Zoo, Tennessee, www.nashvillezoo.org. Psylli: Pliny, 25.123; Aelian, On Animals 1.57; 16.28. Curare: Economic Botany Web pages of University of California, Los Angeles, www.botgard.ucla.edu. In North America, the Iroquois, Apaches, Navajos, and other tribes used poison arrows: Reinach 1909, 52-53 and note 1. Hemlock: Aelian, On Animals 4.23. Rolle 1989, 65.
8 Aelian, On Animals 9.27. Pliny 16.51; 21.177-79. Majno 1991, 488 note 38. Also see Harrison 1994. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 6.780-86, may have been speaking of yew when he mentioned a tree whose “shade was so oppressive as to provoke a headache in one who lies under it.” Arrow poisons can be very long-lived. Recent toxicological analysis of desiccated poison paste on arrows collected in the 1900s in Assam, India, and Burma, in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, revealed that the longevity of the toxin was thirteen hundred years! Victoria and Albert Museum Web site: vam.ac.uk. Rhododendron honey as a weapon: chapter 5.
9 Aelian, On Animals 4.41; Ctesias Fragment 57.17. As a safety precaution to avoid pricking themselves with the lethal toxin, the San Bushmen place the insect guts on the shaft just behind the arrowhead: Robertson 2002. Aristotle and Nicander on toxic beetles: Scarborough 1979, 13-14, 20-21, 73-80. The powerful toxin pederin is now being tested as an anticancer drug. Frank and Kanamitsu 1987 (thanks to Robert Peterson for this reference).
10 Aelian, On Animals 1.56; 2.36 and 50; 8.26. Pliny 9.147 on the “burning sting” of jellyfish and sea urchins. For ancient sources for the story of the stingray spear, see Apollodorus, Epitome 7.36-37 and Frazer’s note 2, pp. 303-304. Thanks to Dolores Urquidi, Austin, Texas, for sharing her research into the use of stingray spines as arrowheads in Central and South America. Schultz 1962, 130, 132. For facts about aconite, henbane, belladonna, curare, and stingrays, see “Poisonous Plants and Animals,” copyright Team C007974, www.library.thinkquest.org.
11 Ancient writers on poison archery: Reinach 1909, 54-56 and notes. Hua T’o removed a poisoned arrow that pierced the arm of General Kuan Yu, about eighteen hundred years ago: Majno 1991, 249-51, Fig. 6.19. Bradford 2001, 160. Strabo 16.4.10. Silius Italicus, Punica 1.320-415, 3.265-74. Ancien
t Greek and Roman authors who mention arrow poisons: Salazar 2000, 28-30. Poisoned arrows were reportedly used in violent uprisings in Kenya in August 1997, according to CNN news reports. Lesho et al. 1998, 512, notes that the use of “biological projectiles . . . persisted into the 20th century during the Russian Revolution, various European conflicts, and the South African Boer wars.”
12 On the history of the bow and arrow and advances in archery technology, see Crosby 2002, 37-39, and his chapter 5. Herodotus’s book 4 describes the Scythians, see esp 4.9. Rolle 1989, 65. For example, a Corinthian vase of 590 BC (Antikenmuseum, Basel, Switzerland) shows Athena holding out a phial for the Hydra poison. Akamba poison arrows: information from Timothy F. Bliss, former resident of Kenya; and descriptions of Akamba bow, quiver, and poison arrows from the 1970s offered for sale in 2002 by the Krackow Company, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, specializing in traditional, worldwide archery equipment.
13 The recipe in Pseudo-Aristotle, On Marvelous Things Heard 845 a 5 (141) states that human blood was buried in a dunghill until it putrefied, then the contaminated blood was mixed with the rotten venom. Aelian, On Animals 9.15, citing a lost work by Theophrastus. Dioscorides also mentions the toxicon pharmacon of the Scythians, 1.106, 2.79. See Reinach 1909, 54-55. Unless it was collected separately, the venom itself would probably lose neurotoxicity if allowed to decompose in the snake.
14 Plutarch, Artaxerxes. Pungee sticks: Christopher et al. 1997, 412. Strabo 11.2.19 (first century BC). Modern stench weapons are based on the finding that excrement and rotting corpses are the two universally intolerable odors for humans across cultures—and with good reason, since corpses and feces are sources of potentially lethal pathogens. The logic was evident in the prescientific era, when foul odors or miasmas were thought to actually cause disease: Wheelis 1999, 11 note 10; Creveld 1991, 25; and see New York Times Magazine, December 15, 2002, 126. U.S. military scientists are developing stench and colored smoke weapons that target racial groups: “When Killing Just Won’t Do” 2003. Rolle 1989, 65. Excrement as weapon in prescientific era: In China (AD 800-1600) defenders of cities poured boiling urine and feces on attackers: Wheelis 1999, note 4, and see Temple 1991, 223, for the use of poison arrows and 216 for excrement explosives in early China. In 1422, two thousand cartloads of excrement were hurled at foes at Carolstein: Eitzen and Takafuji 1997. Parts of this section on Scythian arrow poison appeared in different form in Mayor 1997a. Thanks to herpetologist Aaron Bauer, Villanova University, for information on poisonous snakes of Scythia and India and the feasibility of venom arrows. On tetanus in domestic animal dung and death from tetanus after arrow wounds, see Majno 1991, 199-200. Ancient descriptions of gangrene and tetanus: Salazar 2000, 30-34.
15 Ovid, Tristia 3.10.64; Letter from Pontus 1.2.17; 4.7.11 and 10.31, cited in Reinach 1909, 55, note 5. Armenian arrows: see chapter 7. Rolle 1989, 65. Barbed arrows in antiquity: Salazar 2000, 18-19, 49, 232-33. Superfluous injury: Unlike the blade of a Greek hoplite’s javelin or Roman soldier’s sword, which passed cleanly through a body and could be easily pulled out, the use of long-distance projectiles and missiles with hooked shapes caused more tissue damage and loss of blood. Modern analogies to the misgivings evoked by such arms are evident in the 1899 Hague Convention’s Declaration Concerning Expanding Bullets, prohibiting the newly developed “manstopping” dumdum bullets that expanded on impact and left gaping, ragged wounds instead of penetrating cleanly at high velocity like streamlined metal-jacketed bullets. The expanding bullets were invented at Dum-Dum Arsenal in India in the 1890s to stop fanatical fighters in Afghanistan and India. Current U.S. and NATO copper-jacket, lead-core bullets do fragment on impact, but still cause less damage than exploding bullets. One might compare the Greek hoplite’s spear to the metal-jacket bullet as ancient and modern icons of “clean” warfare “by the rules,” whereas a hooked arrow coated with venom was the ancient equivalent of a dumdum bullet combined with a bio-toxin. See 1907 Hague Convention IV, also 1977 additions to the 1949 Geneva Convention. As early as 1868, the Saint Petersburg Declaration prohibited exploding bullets on the rationale that such weapons are contrary to the laws of humanity because they “uselessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevitable.” Howard et al. 1994, 6-7, 120-21 (1899 Hague rules). Thanks to Mark Wheelis for helpful information on dumdum bullets.
16 Rudenko 1970, 217-18, and color plates 179-80. For patterns of poisonous snakes of Scythian territory, see Phelps 1981, 97-102, 162-64, Figs. 26-30, color plates 16 and 17.
17 Mining gems with arrows: Pliny 37.110-12. Rolle 1989, 65-66; Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “archers.” Modern ethnological parallels suggest the rate of twenty arrows a minute, but the expert Scythians may have been faster.
18 Aelian, On Animals 4.36 describes death by ingestion of tiny amounts (the size of a sesame seed) of the Purple Snake poisons placed in wine, but the sticky residue would serve very well as arrow poisons. For an ancient account of men killed by drinking from a spring poisoned by snake venom, see Aelian, 17.37; and on similar fears in Libya, see Lucan, Civil War, 9.605-20. Thanks to Aaron Bauer and Robert Murphy, senior curator of herpetology, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, for help in identifying the Purple Snake. Kautilya 1951, 449.
19 Strabo 15.2.5-7. Majno 1991, 283, citing the ancient historian Arrian, Indica 8.15. Other sources for Alexander’s campaign in India are Quintus Curtius Rufus, Justin, Diodorus of Sicily. See Polyaenus 4.3.22 for Alexander’s strategies against Porus. On Chandragupta: Bradford 2001, 125-27. About fifteen thousand people die annually from snakebite in India today: Majno 1991, 283.
20 Alexander and contemporary historians referred to the “Brahmans” of Harmatelia as an ethnic group, unaware of the Hindu caste system. Diodorus of Sicily 17.102-103. Strabo 15.2.7. Quintus Curtius 9.8.13-28. Viper constipation: Angier 2002. Aelian, On Animals 12.32, remarks that Indian doctors knew which herbs counteracted the “very violent and rapid spread” of snake venom. Symptomology of viper and cobra envenomation from discussions with Aaron Bauer and Scarborough 1977, 8-9.
21 According to Reinach 1909, 55-56, note 9, the Rigveda epic of India contains references to poison arrows. Laws of Manu 7.90, see Buhler 1886, 230. Majno 1991, 264. The Arthashastra, attributed to Kautilya (also known as Chanakya), in its surviving form also contains material from the first to fifth centuries AD. Kautilya 1951, 442-455, 449 (terror effects), and Book 14. Indian Defence Ministry experiments at University of Pune and National Institute of Virology: Rahman 2002. U.S. military research into pharmaceutical and genome-based anti-sleep agents: Onion 2002; and see the DARPA Web site: www.darpa.mil.
22 Pliny 34.152-54; 25.33, 42, 66-69, 99. The rust treatment is mentioned by Apollodorus and Ovid, too: Gantz 2:579. The effect of rust on poison arrow wounds is unknown, but myrrh has antiseptic properties. Majno 1991, 218, 370, 387-389, and Fig. 9.25. Aelian, On Animals 1.54. Scarborough 1977, 11, 12-18. Salazar 2000, 29.
23 Immunity to venom and poisons: Aelian, On Animals 5.14; 9.29; 16.28. Pliny 7.13-14, 27; 8.229; 11.89-90. Strabo 13.1.14. See chapter 5 on Mithridates.
24 Aelian, On Animals 9.62. Strabo 13.1.14. Cato and the Psylli: Lucan, Civil War 9.600-949. Pliny 11.89-90.
25 On treating poisoned arrow wounds, see Salazar 2000, 28-30; black blood of poison wounds; 29; removing barbed projectiles; 48-50. Majno 1991, compares Greek and Indian arrow wound treatments in the fourth century BC. See 142-45 on treating arrow wounds in Homer: of 147 wounds, the survival rate was 77.6 percent (quote, 143). See 171 (red vs. black blood); 193-95, 266, 271-72 (treating arrow wounds); 279-80 (sucking out venom); 359-61 (removing barbed arrows); 381 (Celsus on the Psylli). “Gloom”: Scarborough 1977, 3.
Chapter 3
1 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 7.84. Strabo 15.2.6. Poupard and Miller 1992, 10, on thirst and poisoning water. Wheelis 1999, 9 note 3, agreed with military historian Milton Leitenberg that contaminating water in antiquity was intended to deny potable water rather than to spread d
isease. But the examples in this chapter and chapter 4 show that poisoning water was often deliberately intended to cause illness.
2 Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 3.107-24, curse 109. Frontinus, Stratagems 3.7.6. Polyaenus 6.13. Kirrha was also known as Krisa. Strabo 9.3.3-4 recounts the destruction of Kirrha and mentions the profusion of hellebore at Anticyra, but omits mention of the poison’s role in the city’s demise.
3 Pausanias 10.37. Ulrich’s find: Peter Levi’s note 259 in vol. 1 of the Penguin edition of Pausanias (1979). See also Plutarch, Solon 11. Slaughter of children and old people, and rape during the sack of Troy: Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 13.78-324; Apollodorus, Epitome 5.21-23, and Frazer’s notes 1-2, pp 238-39. On Greek atrocities during the sack of Troy in ancient literature and art, see Gantz 1993, 2:650-57.
4 Thessalos, Presbeulicos is included in the corpus of Hippocratic texts cited by Grmek 1979, 146-48. Churchill and Iraq: Simons 1994, 179-81. Gas was prohibited by the 1899 Hague Convention, Howard et al., 7, 121, 123. Churchill’s willingness to use gas against the Germans in World War II is discussed by Harris and Paxman, 1982, chapter 5. The British used mustard gas against rebels in Afghanistan in 1919, praising its effectiveness on ignorant and unprotected tribesmen (43-44). Similar lethal effects of deploying a supposedly “nonlethal” gas indiscriminately during a hostage crisis in Moscow in 2002 resulted in more than one hundred deaths of the innocent hostages: see chapter 5.
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs Page 26