Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs

by Adrienne Mayor

  In contrast, by the second century AD, the Roman strategist Polyaenus wrote a military treatise for emperors that openly advocated biochemical and devious stratagems for defeating barbarians without risking battle. As the empire was increasingly forced to desperately defend all its borders, the old ideals of forthright combat and leniency were replaced by policies of maximum force and treachery. The new policies were articulated by the Roman military strategist Vegetius, writing in AD 390, “It is preferable to subdue an enemy by famine, raids, and terror, than in battle where fortune tends to have more influence than bravery.”14

  Despite a general sense in antiquity that biological weapons were cruel and dishonorable, the evidence shows they were employed in certain situations. So, when might the rules of war be overridden? Self-defense, mentioned earlier, was a time-honored rationale. Besieged cities resorted to all manner of resistance, including biochemical options, and desperate populations overcome by invaders turned to bioweapons as a last resort. When one’s forces were outnumbered or facing troops superior in courage, skill, or technology, biological strategies were a real advantage. But the perils and loss of lives in a fair fight could be avoided altogether by deploying toxic weapons, an approach that appealed to Polyaenus and other Romans who admired the Greek hero Odysseus as the model strategist.

  When opponents are identified as barbarians or cultural outsiders, their “uncivilized nature” has long served as an excuse to use unscrupulous weapons and inhumane tactics against them. Other situations, such as holy wars or quelling rebellions, also encouraged the indiscriminate use of bio-weapons, targeting noncombatants as well as warriors. Some commanders used poison in frustration when losing a war, or to break a stalemate or a long, drawn-out siege. The threat of horrifying weapons might discourage would-be attackers, or could be used by aggressors to bring quick capitulation. And then there were those ruthless generals who had no compunctions about using any strategy or weapon at hand to win victory, and in many of the cultures encountered by the Greeks and Romans, poison arrows and ambush were the customary way of war.15

  Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora’s box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago. The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories. Although the evidence from ancient myth shatters the notion of a time when bio-war was unthinkable, it also suggests that profound doubts about the propriety of such weapons arose along with their earliest usage.

  After describing the mythic invention of poison weapons and their use in the legendary Trojan War in the first chapter, we turn to the actual practices of biological and chemical warfare in historical times. Ancient authors reveal exactly how arrow poisons were concocted from venoms and toxins and who used them in the ancient world, and they describe the first documented cases of poisoning enemies’ water supplies and maneuvering foes into deadly environments. Next, compelling evidence from Near Eastern, Greek and Latin, and Indian sources suggests how plagues and other infectious diseases may have been deliberately spread. Other chapters show that toxic honey, tainted wine, and other attractive lures have long served as secret weapons, and tell how venomous creatures and large and small animals were drafted for war duty. Chemical incendiaries have a surprisingly ancient history, too, beginning with the earliest uses of poison gases and ancient versions of napalm centuries before the invention of Greek Fire.

  The difficulty of controlling the forces unleashed when nature itself is turned into a weapon means that the annals of biochemical warfare are rife with risks of self-injury, friends fired upon in error, collateral damage, and unforeseen consequences for future generations. Because secret weapons are intended to destabilize and play on the unexpected, such strategies by their very nature have cut an erratic swath through history. It is only logical, therefore, that those who use biochemical weapons should reap a “whirlwind of unintended results.”16 That bio-war is a double-edged sword is a theme that originated in myth and pervades the long history of biochemical weapons.

  1

  HERCULES AND THE HYDRA: THE INVENTION OF BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

  The poison, heated by fire, coursed through his limbs.

  His blood, saturated by the burning poison,

  hissed and boiled. There was no limit

  to his agony as flames attacked his heart

  and the hidden pestilence melted his bones.

  —Death of Hercules, Ovid, Metamorphoses

  IT WAS HERCULES, the greatest hero of Greek mythology, who invented the first biological weapon described in Western literature. When he dipped his arrows in serpent venom, he opened up a world not only of toxic warfare, but also of unanticipated consequences. Indeed, the deepest roots of the concept of biological weapons extend very far back in time, even before the Greek myths were written down by Homer in the eighth century BC. Poison and arrows were deeply intertwined in the ancient Greek language itself. The word for poison in ancient Greek, toxicon, derived from toxon, arrow. And in Latin, the word for poison, toxica, was said to derive from taxus, yew, because the first poison arrows had been daubed with deadly yew-berry juice. In antiquity, then, a “toxic” substance meant “something for the bow and arrow.”

  The great Greek physician of the first century AD, Dioscorides, was the first to remark on the derivation of the word “toxic” from “arrow.” But Dioscorides insisted that only barbarian foreigners—never the Greeks themselves—resorted to poisoned weapons. His assumption was widely accepted in antiquity and still holds sway today, as evident in a recent declaration about poison arrows by Guido Majno, the medical historian whose specialty is war wounds in the ancient world: “This kind of treachery never occurs in the tales about Troy.”1

  Since antiquity, the Greek legends about great heroes and the Trojan War have been celebrated for their thrilling battles and heroic deaths in the era of myth. To be sure, the typical weapons of Bronze Age warfare glorified in the myths—bow and arrow, javelin, spear, sword, and axe—unleashed enough gory mayhem and violent death on the battlefield to satisfy the most bloodthirsty audience. But most people today assume that the very idea of poisoning weapons was a barbaric practice abhorred by the ancient Greeks. Modern audiences take it for granted that heroes like Hercules and the warriors of the Trojan War must have engaged in the noblest forms of ancient combat, fighting fairly and face-to-face. They wreaked havoc, but remained honorable in their behavior.

  But not always. A closer look uncovers compelling evidence of less noble, decidedly unheroic forms of warfare in these legendary roots of Western culture. Mythical conflicts teem with treachery, and secretly poisoned arrows and spears were wielded by some of the greatest champions of classical mythology. This picture of morally unsettling ways of dispatching enemies is usually overshadowed by the larger-than-life figures and their exciting adventures. But once we begin to peer into the darker reaches of the mythic tapestry, scenes of nefarious trickery and ghastly suffering from poisoned weapons emerge.

  Two famous Greek myths—the story of Hercules and the Hydra, and the Trojan War—turn out to have crucial information about the origins of biological weapons and the ancient attitudes toward their use.

  Hercules, the superhero of Greek myth, was renowned for his Twelve Labors. In his first labor, he slaughtered the fearsome Lion of Nemea. He then donned its skin and set out on his second task. His mission was to destroy an even more daunting monster, the Many-Headed Hydra. This gigantic, poisonous water-serpent lurked in the swamps of Lerna, terrorizing the people of southern Greece. The Hydra was said to have nine, ten, fifty, even a hundred heads—and worse yet, the central head was immortal.

  Hercules forced the Hydra to emerge from its den by shooting fiery arrows coated with pitch—the sticky sap from pine trees. The mighty hero then seized the giant snake with his bare hands, thinking he could strangle it like th
e Nemean Lion. Hercules was strong, but no match for the Hydra. It coiled its huge body around his legs and poised its multiple heads to strike. Hercules began to smash the horrid snake heads with his club. When this proved futile, he drew his sword to chop them off.

  The most diabolical thing about the Hydra was that it actually “thrived on its wounds,” in the words of the Roman poet, Ovid. Each time Hercules cut off one head, two more instantly regenerated. Soon the monster was bristling with heads and fangs dripping with venom. What to do? His ordinary weapons—hands, club, sword, arrows—were useless. So Hercules resorted to fire. Taking up a burning torch, he cauterized each bloody neck as he chopped off a head, to prevent it from sprouting new ones. But the middle head was immortal. This head Hercules hacked off, and quickly buried it alive in the ground. Then he placed a heavy rock over the spot. The ancient Greeks and Romans used to point out a colossal boulder on the road to Lerna, marking the place where Hercules had entombed the Hydra’s living head.

  FIGURE 2. Hercules and the Hydra. Hercules (left) chops off the heads, while his companion (right) cauterizes the necks with torches. Hercules will later dip his arrows in the Hydra’s venom; meanwhile, Athena, Greek goddess of war (far right), holds the conventional weapons of a hoplite warrior, eschewed by Hercules. Krater, about 525 BC, by the Kleophrades Painter.

  (The J. Paul Getty Museum)

  Hercules was a hunter who took trophies: he had fashioned his famous cape from the skin of the Nemean Lion. After slaying the Hydra, Hercules slashed open the body and dipped his arrows in the poisonous venom of the monstrous serpent. Ever after, Hercules’ oversized quiver carried a seemingly endless supply of arrows made super-deadly by Hydra venom.2

  By steeping his arrows in the monster’s venom, Hercules created the first biological weapon. The inspiration flowed naturally from his previous idea for magnifying the power of his arrows, by coating them in pine resin to create noxious fire and fumes (in essence, a chemical weapon). Next, Hercules appropriated the Hydra’s natural weapon of deadly venom to enhance his own weapons. Since myths often coalesced around a core of historical and scientific realities, the ancient story of the Hydra arrows suggests that projectile weapons tipped with toxic or combustible substances must have been known very early in Greek history. Notably, the descriptions of poisoned wounds in the myths of Hercules—and the Trojan War—accurately depict the very real effects of snake venom and other known arrow toxins. In historical accounts of the ancient use of poisoned projectiles, archers concocted effective arrow poisons from a variety of pernicious ingredients, including viper venom. Indeed, the Scythians, real-life nomadic horse-people of the Steppes who were dreaded for their snake-poison arrows, considered Hercules to be their cultural founder.

  The mythical lore that grew up around Hercules’ invention of snake-venom arrows reveals the complex attitudes of the ancient Greeks toward weapons that delivered hidden poisons. Deep misgivings were expressed in the earliest myths about warriors who destroyed their enemies with toxic weapons. Many mythological characters succumbed to Hercules’ arrows. Almost as soon as they were created, however, the poison weapons set in motion a relentless train of tragedies for Hercules and the Greeks—not to mention the Greeks’ enemies, the Trojans. With the very first deployment of his newly discovered biological weapons, Hercules proved powerless to avoid hurting his own friends and innocent bystanders.

  The first victims included some of Hercules’ oldest friends. On his way to another labor—killing a gigantic boar—Hercules attended a party hosted by his Centaur friend, the half-man, half-horse, Pholus. But when Pholus opened a jug of wine, a gang of violent Centaurs invaded the party. Hercules leapt up to repel them, and in the ensuing clash many Centaurs were felled by Hercules’ poisoned arrows as he pursued them over the landscape. The fleeing horde of horse-men took refuge in the cave of Chiron, a peaceful Centaur who had taught humankind the arts of medicine and who was an old friend of Hercules.

  As the Centaurs cowered around Chiron, Hercules let fly a host of Hydra-venom arrows. By mischance, one struck Chiron in the knee. Hercules rushed to his old friend’s side, deeply distressed. He drew the shaft out from Chiron’s leg and quickly applied a special poultice, as Chiron directed. And here the mythographers explain just how terrible a wound from a venom-tipped arrow was: The pain was so horrendous that you would sell your eternal soul for a swift death! According to myth, Chiron was immortal, but the agony was so excruciating that he begged the gods to relieve him of immortality and allow him to die.

  Chiron’s plea was answered when Prometheus volunteered to take on Chiron’s eternal life. The Centaur was released from endless pain, and expired. Prometheus was destined to regret his act, however. When he later stole fire from the gods and gave it to humankind, Prometheus’s punishment was particularly horrifying because he could not die. As every Greek knew, every day for the rest of time, Zeus’s vulture came to torture the immortal Prometheus.

  FIGURE 3. Hercules shoots the Centaur Nessus with a Hydra-venom arrow, as he carries away Deianeira. It was the Centaur’s venom-poisoned blood that ultimately destroyed Hercules himself.

  While Hercules was tending the grievously wounded Chiron, his other Centaur friend, Pholus, became another unintended victim. Pholus removed an arrow from one of his companions’ corpses and wondered how such a little thing could have killed such a strong creature. As he examined the arrow, it slipped from his hand and dropped on his foot. He was mortally wounded, and Hercules sorrowfully buried yet another victim of “collateral damage.”

  The danger of self-inflicted wounds or accidents with poison projectiles was always present, since even a mere scratch could be devastating. Legendary “friendly fire” incidents, like the tragic deaths of Chiron and Pholus, were favorite subjects of Greek and Roman painters and sculptors. Another innocent victim was Hercules’ own son, Telephus. During the preparations for the Trojan War, the youth tripped on a vine and fell against a spear carried by Achilles, the great Greek warrior. The point struck Telephus’s thigh, causing an incurable, festering wound. The unhealing wound implies that Achilles had smeared his spearpoint with some sort of poison. And as fate would have it, a poison arrow would bring Achilles’ own demise on the battlefield at Troy.3

  In the most ironic twist of fate, Hercules himself ultimately succumbed to the Hydra venom that he had daubed on his own arrows. A wily Centaur named Nessus tricked Hercules and abducted his wife, Deianeira. Enraged, Hercules shot Nessus in the back with a Hydra arrow that pierced his heart. As the Roman poet Ovid stressed in his version of the myth, it is not fair to shoot even a rogue in the back with a poisoned arrow. And as in most mythic tales, treachery bred more treachery, and the venom multiplied in power, just like the Hydra’s heads. The dying Centaur tricked Deianeira into collecting the toxic blood flowing from his wound. Advising her to keep it in an airtight container, away from heat and light, Nessus promised that if she daubed this substance on a tunic for Hercules someday, it would work as a love charm.

  Years later, Deianeira, unaware of the potential for second-hand poisoning, secretly treated a beautiful tunic with the Centaur’s contaminated blood and gave it as a gift to her husband. What happened next was the subject of a famous tragedy by the Athenian playwright Sophocles (written about 430 BC). Hercules put on the shirt to make a special sacrifice. As he approached the fire, the heat activated the Hydra poison. The envenomed tunic caused Hercules such fiery torture that he ran amok, bellowing like a wounded bull and uprooting trees. In desperation, he plunged into a stream. But the water only increased the poison’s burning power, and that stream ran scalding-hot forever after. Hercules struggled to tear off the garment, but it adhered to his flesh and corroded his skin like acid or some unnatural fire.

  Unable to bear the pain of the burning poison, Hercules shouted for his companions to light a large funeral pyre. His arms-bearer and friend, the great archer Philoctetes, was the only one courageous enough to obey. In gratitude, Hercules bequeathed h
is special bow (originally a gift from Apollo, the archer-god whose arrows brought plague) and his quiver of Hydra arrows to his friend. Then the mighty hero threw himself onto the flaming pyre and was burned alive.

  Hercules’ agony is a poetic representation of painful death by viper venom, which was often compared to burning alive. Indeed, fire motifs pervade the early mythology of biological weapons. Flaming arrows and searing torches had destroyed the Hydra, and now the Hydra venom was activated by heat and took on the nature of unquenchable fire. In fact, a real viper much feared in Greece, called the dipsas in antiquity, injects a thick venom into its victims and, according to ancient writers, it was said to “burn and corrode, setting victims on fire as if they were lying on a funeral pyre.”4

  FIG 4. Hercules on his funeral pyre entrusting the quiver of Hydra-venom arrows to the young archer, Philoctetes. Red-figure psykter, 475-425 BC.

  (Private collection, New York)

  But the tragic consequences ignited by Hercules’ invention of poison arrows did not end with the hero’s death. When she learned the result of her unwitting use of a poison weapon, Deianeira killed herself. And the quiver of deadly arrows went on to bring great misfortune to Philoctetes during the Trojan War.