Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs

by Adrienne Mayor

  5 Doctors were accused of propagating pestilence in the Middle Ages, and suspicions continued in early modern times: see Bercé 1993. Examples of Italian, American, French, and Japanese doctors involved in biological warfare are discussed by Lesho et al. 1998, 513; Robertson and Robertson 1995, 370 (Civil War). The army physician who rose to the rank of general in World War II, Dr. Shiro Ishii, is one of the most notorious medical war criminals of the modern era. As director of Japan’s extensive biological war effort, the doctor was responsible for many thousands of deaths from a vast array of biochemical agents in China and has been accused of creating “the most gruesome series of biological weapons experiments in history.” His staff included more than three thousand entomologists, botanists, and microbiologists, and fifty physicians. Harris and Paxman 1982; Robertson and Robertson 1995, 371; Christopher et al. 1997, 413; Williams and Wallace 1989. South African “doctors of death”: “The Science of Apartheid” 1998; Finnegan 2001.

  6 The Geneva Convention resulted in the Geneva Protocol of 1925, prohibiting the use, but not the production, of biochemical agents. Harris and Paxman 1982, 45-48. Grmek 1979, 147, 141-42. Poupard and Miller 1992, 13 on 1925 Geneva Convention, “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare.” Isocrates, Plataicus 14.31. Whitehead 1990, commentary on Aeneas the Tactician 8.4, p 115, cites the Athenian orator Aeschines, On the Embassy 2.115, on the vow by Delphi’s Amphictionic League never to totally destroy any league city or interfere with “flowing water.” See also Ober 1994, 12. “As old as the weapons themselves”: Lesho et al. 1998, 515. Laws of Manu 7.90, see Buhler 1886, 230, 247; see also Maskiell and Mayor 2001, 25.

  7 Athenians fouling their own wells: Whitehead 1990, 115, commentary on Aeneas the Tactician 8.4, citing Francis and Vickers 1988. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.47-55; 3.87. Aeneas’s shocked British commentators: see Whitehead’s commentary, 1990, 115, citing Hunter and Handford. Iroquois: Wheelis 1999, 27. Historical and recent examples of poisoning wells: Christopher et al. 1997.

  8 Frontinus, Stratagems 3.7.4-5. Diverting the Euphrates was attributed to Cyrus by Xenophon, Cyropaedia 7.5, and Polyaenus 7.6.5, 8.26 (Semiramis inscription). Philostratus, Apollonius of Tyana, 1.25, credited Medea with the engineering feat. See Polyaenus 1.3.5. Lesho et al. 1998, 512. Causing massive flooding that indiscriminately killed noncombatants involved ethical issues for early Islamic scholars: Hashmi (forthcoming) cites “numerous records of flooding as a battlefield tactic by Muslim armies” and notes “the many instances in which it backfired against its perpetrator, sweeping away his own besieging troops along with his enemies.”

  9 Frontinus, Stratagems 4.1.36. Florus 1.35.5-7. Tacitus Annals 3.1.59-68; 5.2.84. Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 3.8. Virgil, Aeneid 9.770-74.

  10 Penzer 1952, 3-5, citing Kautilya’s Arthashastra. Kautilya 1951, 432-433, 435, 441-45, 455-57. Date of Susruta Samhita, Majno 1991, 511 note 26.

  11 On deadly, sulphurous exhalations from bodies of water or the earth: Pliny 2.207-208; 2.232 (deadly springs); 31.26 and 49; 35.174. See also Virgil, Aeneid 6.236-42, and Healy 1999, 246. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 6.738-79, 6.817-38. Foul odors and disease or poison: Poupard and Miller 1992, 10.

  12 Strabo 8.3.19 (marsh poisoned by Hydra poison). Quintus of Smyrna, Fall of Troy 2.561-66. Empedocles and draining malarial marshes: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 8.70; Grmek 1979, 159; Faraone 1992, 64. Thanks to Philip Thibodeau for pointing out Varro’s De Re Rustica 1.12.2. Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 6.1091-1286. Livy 5.48; 25.26. Diodorus of Sicily 12.45.2-4; 14.70-71. Vegetius, On Military Matters.

  13 Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.6.15. Military disasters due to malarial swamps and the “strategic uses of insalubrious terrain”: Grmek 1979, 149-63, 151 (“particular measures”), citing Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War 6-7, esp. 7.47.1-2; Plutarch, Nicias; and Diodorus of Sicily 13-14. Grmek 149-50.

  14 Frontinus, Stratagems 2.7.12. Plutarch, Moralia 202.4. Bradford 2001, 201. Pliny 25.20-21. Tacitus, Annals 3.1.58-70.

  15 Grmek 149-50. Polyaenus 2.30. Robertson and Robertson 1995, 369.

  16 Grmek 1979, 161-63, believes that the grim story of Clearchus is true, based on many historical accounts that were available to Polyaenus but are now lost. Saddam’s attack on Kurds: Simons 1994; Hashmi 2004. As the George W. Bush administration prepared to attack Iraq to destroy its stores of biochemical arms in 2002, reports emerged that suppliers in the United States had provided many of the raw materials for Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons program during the Reagan administration of the 1980s; those reports were confirmed in 2003. Some U.S. troops who destroyed Iraq’s biochemical munitions in the Gulf War of 1991 now suffer a cluster of health problems that stem in part from the very agents created by the United States and sent to Iraq. Acknowledging the age-old rebound problems for those involved with biochemical armaments, one U.S. senator critical of the attack on Iraq asked in 2002, “Are we now facing the possibility of reaping what we have sown?” Origins of Iraq’s bio-weaponry: CBS News, and New York Times, August 18, 2002; Kelley 2002; Shenon 2003. Controversial allegations of poisons used against political insurgencies in Ethiopia and Southeast Asia between 1975 and 1981 are discussed by Eitzen and Takafugi 1997, chapters 18 and 34; Lesho et al. 1998, 515; and Christopher et al. 1997, 415. South Africa: “Science of Apartheid” 1998; Finnegan 2001. Widely discussed examples of U.S. government bio-weapons and nuclear tests endangering American citizens during the Cold War have been documented. For example, the release of supposedly harmless pathogens in San Francisco Bay in 1950 caused an outbreak of infections with at least one fatality, and in 2002, the U.S. government acknowledged secret releases of bio-toxins and chemical agents (nerve agents and hallucinogens being developed as offensive weapons) aboard Navy ships, and in several U.S. locations in 1949-71. Lesho et al. 1998, 513-14; Christopher et al. 1997, 414; Aldinger 2002; “Sailors Sprayed with Nerve Gas in Test,” 2002. Japanese dissemination of cholera among the Chinese in 1941 resulted in about seventeen hundred fatalities of unprotected Japanese troops, besides the targeted ten thousand Chinese victims: Christopher et al. 1997, 413. Grmek 1979, 149-50.

  Chapter 4

  1 Today the word “plague” usually connotes bubonic or Black Plague, but in antiquity, “plague” was used for all epidemics. The Mongols (Tatars) at Kaffa: Wheelis 2002; Derbes 1966; Robertson and Robertson 1995, 370; Christopher et al. 1997, 412; Lesho et al. 1998, 512. Poupard and Miller 1992, 11. Hasdrubal: Livy 27.43-50. Hannibal catapulting vipers, see chapter 6.

  2 Communicable disease mechanisms were established by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and other scientists in the nineteenth century, but disease transmission was observed and remarked upon very early in human history. Neufeld 1980, 32-34, discusses evidence for ancient intuitions about contagion. “Miasmas”: Livy 25.26. Cyzicus: Appian, “Mithridatic Wars” 12.76; see also “Punic Wars” 73 for a similar corpse-borne plague that struck the Carthaginian army in 150 BC.

  3 Livy 25.26 (“contact with the sick spread the disease”); Diodorus of Sicily 14.70.4-71.4 (“those who tended the sick were seized by the plague”). Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 2.47-55; 3.87. Zinsser 1963, 119-27; McNeill 1976, 105-6. Sophocles, Trachinian Women 555-1038 (lines 956, 1038 anthos, “pustulant efflorescence”). Cedrenus cited in Zinsser 1963, 138. Chinese awareness of fomites in clothing: Temple 1991, 215.

  4 Cuneiform tablets about contagion, found in the archives of Mari: Sasson 2000, 1911-24 and personal correspondence, November 2002; also Neufeld 1980, 33. On early understanding of smallpox contagion, inoculation, quarantine, and long-term virulence of desiccated smallpox matter, see Fenn 2000, 1561, 1563-64; McNeill 1976, 253. On political assassinations by gifts of smallpox-infected clothing in Mughal India: Maskiell and Mayor 2001. Smallpox-infected blankets and missiles in early Colonial American military history: Fenn 2000, 1577-79; Poupard and Miller 1992, 1
1-13. See Mayor 1995b for a cross-cultural survey of disease-infected items as bio-weapons, such as smallpox blankets given to Native Americans, from antiquity to the present. Articles of clothing laced with nerve poisons absorbed through the skin were created to kill anti-apartheid activists, according to testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, reported in “The Science of Apartheid” 1998; and in Finnegan 2001, 62.

  5 Hittite plague rituals: Faraone 1992, 99, 109 notes 37-39; see also 41-42, 44, 47, 59-73.

  6 On Hittite and Babylonian plague gods, Faraone 1992, 61, 120-21, 125-27, and see 128-32, esp. 130 on rodents bringing pestilence. On pestilence and warfare through history, Zinsser 1963, esp. 139, 141; 125-26 on the epidemic that struck the Carthaginians. See also McNeill 1976, 115-27.

  7 Exodus 1 and 7-12, and New Oxford Annotated Bible 1973, commentary. Poisoning fish with chemicals: Pliny 25.98. Homer, Iliad 1.50-70. On intention to spread contagion, see Wheelis 1999, 9. Tetrahedron, a New Age-survivalist company based in Idaho, sells “Bible-recommended” essentials oils to protect against biological warfare, including one called Exodus II supposedly concocted by Moses “to protect the Israelites from plague” (see chapter 5, on attempts to immunize against bio-attack).

  8 Army troops in Burma (Myanmar) carried out systematic rape as a “weapon of war” to crush ethnic rebellion: New York Times, December 27, 2002. In 1975, a U.S. military manual alluded to the theoretical possibility of developing ethnic biochemical weapons to selectively incapacitate or kill specific population groups by taking advantage of genetic knowledge, and in the 1980s, the Soviets repeatedly accused the United States, Israel, and South Africa of seeking to develop “ethnic weapons,” allegations denied by U.S. authorities as “preposterous [and] out of the question.” Wick 1988, 14-21. South Africa’s “Project Coast”: Finnegan 2001, 58, 61-63. The possibility of ethnic “genetic bombs” is discussed by Harris and Paxman 1982. According to “Nonlethal Weapons: Terms and References,” a recent report published by the U.S. Air Force Institute for National Security Studies, proposals are being considered for “genetic alteration” weapons that would create long-term birth defects over generations among enemy populations: reported in “When Killing Just Won’t Do” 2003.

  9 “Pharaoh’s orders, see Exodus 1; Herod’s orders, see Matthew 2. Rose 1959, 234-35; Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. “Sabini”; Polyaenus 8.3.1. Arthashastra: Bradford 2001, 127.

  10 Man-made pestilence: Grmek 1997, 148-50. Seneca, On Anger 2.9.3; Livy 8.18; Orosius, Histories against the Pagans 3.10. Dio Cassius, Epitome 67.11 and 73.14. Panic induced by modern bio-terror fears in the United States: Meckler 2002. On plagues in antiquity, see Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “plague”; and Faraone 1992, 128-32.

  11 Kautilya 1951, 443-46. Mousepox virus is discussed in Preston’s Demon in the Freezer (2002). Synthetic virus discovery: “Do-It-Yourself Virus Recreated from Synthetic DNA,” Science News, July 13, 2002, 22; see also Newsweek July 22, 8. Microbiologists point out that the polio virus is a relatively simple virus. “It is still a formidable challenge to synthesize in vitro one of the more complicated viruses (such as the pox viruses).” Mark Wheelis, personal correspondence, February 4, 2003.

  12 On cross-cultural ancient and modern legends about “bottling up” plague and releasing it against enemies, see Mayor 1995b and Maskiell and Mayor 2001. The Ark: 1 Samuel 4-7; 2 Samuel 6.6-7 (Uzzah). For further discussion of the Ark-related plague, see chapter 6.

  13 Plague demons kept in the temple at Jerusalem, Testament of Solomon manuscripts and Testimony of Truth, Nag Hammadi library. Dating and text analysis, Johnston 2002 and James Harding and Loveday Alexander, Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, “Dating the Testament of Solomon,” May 28, 1999. Conybeare 1898. Quotes from Bonner 1956, 5-6. (Faraone 1992, 72 note 84, cited Bonner, but mistook Solomon for Samuel and Babylonians for Assyrians.) Bashiruddin Mehmood was accused in 2001 of ties to Islamic terrorists, after plans for anthrax balloons were found in the offices of an organization he headed in Afghanistan: reported in the New York Times, November 28, 2001. Islamic scientists on the legend of Solomon: Aftergood 2001, citing a Wall Street Journal article on “Islamic Science,” September 13, 1988, and Islam and Science (1991) by Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy. The plague during Titus’s reign (AD 79-81) occurred about nine years after he destroyed the temple, according to Suetonius, Titus.

  14 Faraone 1992, 61-64. The two ancient sources for the great plague of AD 165-80, sometimes called the Plague of Antoninus, are the biography of Lucius Verus, by “Julius Capitolinus” in Lives of the Later Caesars (Historia Augusta) 7-8; and Ammianus Marcellinus, 23.6.24. Zinsser 1963, 135-37. McNeill 1976, 116-17.

  15 Diodorus of Sicily 14.70.4. Appian, “Illyrian Wars” 4. Hamaxitus: Strabo 13.1.48-49. Aelian, On Animals 12.5; 4.40; 9.15; 10.49; 12.20; 14.20. Faraone 1992, 61-62. “Cures” for rabies are given by Pliny 29.98-102. Kautilya 1951, 444. Rabies “bombs”: Robertson and Robertson 1995, 370. The Polish general was Casimir Siemenowicz, author of The Grand Art d’Artillerie (1650): see Lesho et al. 1998, 512-13; Partington 1999, 168. In about 1500, Leonardo da Vinci envisioned a bomb made from mad-dog saliva, tarantula venom, toxic toads, sulphur, arsenic, and burnt feathers. Temple 1991, 218. On the long viability of smallpox matter and aerosols: Lesho et al. 1998, 512. On archaeologists’ concerns that smallpox could be accidentally released during excavations of ancient sites, see Fenn 2000, 1558 note 9.

  16 Harris 1995. Catapults: See Oxford Classical Dictionary, s.v. “artillery.” Greek Fire stored in Byzantine churches: Partington 1999, 25 and note 218. Myra: Forbes 1964, 19.

  17 Quotes from Faraone 1992, 63, 65, 66 (Hercules can only offer defensive aid to armies). The temple at Chryse was dedicated to Apollo the god of pestilential mice, notorious carriers of disease, and it was not far from the temple of Apollo at Hamaxitus, which actually kept hordes of mice. In a striking coincidence in the ancient history of biological warfare, Chryse was also the name of the desert island where Philoctetes suffered a poison-arrow wound.

  18 Partington 1999, 21 and note 191. Louis XIV, Hitler, Nixon, treaties: Robertson and Robertson 1995, 369, 371, 372. Christopher et al. 1997, 413-16. Lesho et al. 1998, 513-15. Many military scientists use the circular logic that biochemical weapons must first be invented so that they can prepare countermeasures. Harris and Paxman 1982, chapter 3, esp 42. In 1956, the United States “changed its policy of ‘defensive use only’ to include possible deployment of biological weapons in situations other than retaliation”: Poupard and Miller 1992, 14-15. On last-resort strategies and extremities of war, see Nardin 1996, 28-29, 86-88, 133.

  19 Booby-trapped chests: Partington 1999, 170. Modern examples: Robertson and Robertson 1995, 371; Christopher et al. 1997, 413-14; Lesho et al. 1998, 513. Ishii’s chronic illness: Harris and Paxman 1982, 75-79. In 1971, a smallpox outbreak in Aralsk, Kazakhstan, may have resulted from the release of a strain of weaponized smallpox tested on an island in the Aral Sea, an island that is contaminated by anthrax and other germ weaponry buried by the Soviet military. Miller 2002b. Faraone 1992, 66, 120-21.

  20 Poison Maidens: Penzer 1952, 3, 12-71. Poison Sultan: Maskiell and Mayor 2001, 165. Fears of “smallpox martyrs,” infected individuals who could be dispatched by terrorists to spread contagion, rose in 2002: New York Times Magazine, December 15, 2002, 122. Grafton 1995, 181.

  Chapter 5

  1 Xenophon, Anabasis 2.5; 4.8. Diodorus of Sicily 14.26-30. Pliny 21.74-78 (on poison honey); see 25.37 on antidotes from poisons. On toxic honey in antiquity and modern times, see Mayor 1995a. Interview with T. C., February 1986. Ambrose 1974, 34.

  2 Pliny 25.5-7. Agari snake-venom doctors: Appian, “Mithridatic Wars” 12.88. Mithridates’ animal bodyguard: Aelian, On Animals 7.46. Laws of Manu 7.218, see Buhler 1886, 251. Knowledge of Indian medicine in the Roman era, see Majno 1991, 374-78.

  3 Celsus, a physician during the reign of Tiberius, listed thirty-six theriac ingredients. Majno 1991, 414-17.


  4 Julius Capitolinus, Lives of the Later Caesars, Marcus Antoninus 15.3. Kautilya 1951, 443, 455-57. Saddam seeks antidote for nerve gas: Miller 2002a. One of Tetrahedron’s “Essential Oils for Biological Warfare Preparedness” was allegedly “used by Moses to protect the Israelites from plague.” The oil contains cinnamon, cassia, calamus, myrrh, hyssop, frankincense, spikenard, and galbanum in olive oil: www.tetrahedron.org. The existence of Gulf War Syndrome, a cluster of physical and psychological symptoms, has not been acknowledged by the U.S. government. The syndrome has been attributed in part to the vaccinations and in part to poisoning that occurred when U.S. troops destroyed chemical and biological munitions in Iraq during the Gulf War of 1991. Sarah Edmonds, “Grisly U.S. Crimes Raise Questions on Gulf War Illness,” Reuters, Washington, DC, November 15, 2002. Germans and typhus: Christopher et al. 1997, 413. Marcus Aurelius: Majno 1991, 414-15.

  5 Pliny 25.5-7, 37, and 62-65; 29.24-26. Mithridates: Dio Cassius 36-37; Appian “Mithridatic Wars” 12; Strabo 12.3.30-31.

  6 Pompey: Strabo 12.3.18. Mayor 1995a.

  7 Aelian On Animals 5.29. Aeneas the Tactician 16.5-7. Kautilya 1951, 441. Hannibalic wars: Bradford 2001, 178-89. Frontinus, Stratagems 2.5.13-14, and 23.

  8 Dio Cassius, Epitome 67.5.6.

  9 Polyaenus 1.1.1; 1.1 and 1.3; 1.preface.1-3; 8.25.1.

  10 Polyaenus 8.28; 31.18. Herodotus 1.199-216. Strabo’s version, 11.8.4-6, substituted another Scythian tribe, the Sacae (neighbors of the Massagetae) as the victims.

  11 Polyaenus 5.10.1; 8.23.1. See Oxford Classical Dictionary s.v. “Himilco.” Mandrake: Pliny 25.147-50. Frontinus, Stratagems 2.5.12. A Theopompus fragment and Polyaenus 7.42 recounted the Celts’ plan.

  12 Leprosy wine: Grmek 1979, 147. Anthrax candy: Lesho et al. 1998, 513; and on Ishii see Harris and Paxman 1982, 75-79. “Science of Apartheid” 1998, 19, 24; Finnegan 2001. See Poupard and Miller 1992, 13, and Eitzen and Takfuji 1997, on the Nazis allegedly distributing infected toys and candy in Romania.