Another oft-mentioned arrow drug, aconite or monkshood (sometimes called wolfbane), is one of the most dangerous plant poisons known to mankind and is found in many parts of the world. Its first effect is like that of a stimulant, but then it paralyzes the nervous system, causing drooling and vomiting. Finally, the limbs go numb and death results. The excessive salivation may be the reason the poison was associated in Greek myth with a mad dog foaming at the jaws. Aconite may have been the arrow toxin sought by Odysseus in Ephyra, near the mouth of the Underworld. According to Pliny, a town on the Black Sea, Aconae, was held in “evil repute” because of its abundance of aconite.
Himalayan aconite (called bish or bikh) was so lethal that sheep had to be muzzled in its vicinity. This “mountain aconite” was used in ancient India for poisoning arrowheads, and aconite is still used in India by poachers who kill elephants for ivory. In the early 1800s, the Gurkhas of Nepal considered the plant “a great protection against enemy attacks,” for they could destroy entire armies by poisoning wells with crushed aconite. During the war between the Spanish and the Moors in 1483, the Arab archers wrapped bits of cotton or linen around their arrows and dipped them in distilled aconite juice. Five centuries later, in World War II, Nazi scientists extracted the chemical toxin aconitine from aconite plants, in order to manufacture poisoned bullets.
FIGURE 7. Black hellebore (Christmas rose), a toxic plant used to poison arrows and water supplies in antiquity.
(Curtis Botanical Magazine, 1787)
According to Aelian, hyoscyamus or henbane, the sticky, gray-green, and bad-smelling weed (Hyoscyamus niger) that contains the powerful narcotic poisons hyoscyamine and scopolamine, had to be collected without touching any part of the plant (all parts of henbane are in fact poisonous). One arcane method was to loosen the soil around the root with a dagger, then attach the stem to the leg of a trained bird. As the bird flew up, it uprooted the henbane. Pliny expounded on the dangers of henbane, which was sometimes used, in tiny doses, as an anaesthetic. “In my opinion,” he wrote, “it is a dangerous drug in any form,” for it deranges the brain. Henbane poisoning can cause violent seizures, psychosis, and death. It was another of the several arrow poisons said to be collected by the Gauls. Perhaps they used hellebore (with its meat-tenderizing effect) and fast-acting snake venom for game, and reserved deadly henbane for their human foes.6
Preparing weapons from poisons evoked a lot of anxiety about self-inflicted wounds and “friendly fire” accidents in antiquity. The risks of handling bio-toxins were (and still are) very real, as shown by complex preparation methods described by the ancient writers. One can gain further insights into ways the ancients may have avoided self-poisoning problems by looking at some special procedures for creating poison weapons among more contemporary people in Asia, Africa, and South America.
In South America, for example, many rainforest tribes use “poison arrow” frogs to treat arrows and blowgun darts. The frogs secrete an extremely deadly chemical through their skin: one frog contains about two hundred micrograms of poison, and just two micrograms are instantly fatal to a human. The toxin of one frog can tip about fifty arrows, and to avoid touching the powerful poison, most archers pin down a living frog with a stick and carefully wipe their arrows on the slimy skin. But a safer method invented by the Choco Indians in Colombia yields an even greater amount of concentrated poison. They roast a skewered frog on a stick over a fire, catching the dripping toxin in a bottle, into which they can safely dip their darts.
The Choco practice sheds some light on a puzzling passage in Pliny’s natural history about the Psylli, a mysterious nomadic tribe of North Africa. The Psylli were snake charmers, and as masters of myriad venoms from snakes to scorpions, they were said to be immune to all of them. After describing poisonous frogs and toads known in antiquity, Pliny claims that he once witnessed the Psylli placing toxic toads in heated pans. Scholars have wondered why the Psylli “irritated” the toxic amphibians in this way. Taking into account the Choco methods, however, a more logical explanation might be that the Psylli were roasting the toads to obtain their poison, which was said to bring death more rapidly than the bite of an asp.
The Spanish conquistadors were terrified of the poison darts of the South American Indians, and despite the thick leathern cuirasses they wore to deflect the arrows, many early explorers died from weapons coated with deadly frog slime, or the plant toxins strychnine or curare, an alkaloid that causes fatal paralysis. A mere pinprick from a small curare blowgun dart can bring down a human or a large animal. In the Amazon rainforest, natives carried as many as six hundred tiny curare darts in a quiver, and there were horrifying reports that curare was not only used on projectiles, but in hand-to-hand combat too: it was rumored that the natives painted their fingernails with the toxin.
The art of preparing curare was extremely hazardous, yet a remarkable number of different combinations of curare arrow poison have been invented over the ages. The naturalist-explorer Alexander von Humboldt was the first Westerner to witness the mysteries of curare preparation by shamans, in 1807. The process took many days and was fraught with danger. In view of the secret powers of the Psylli and all the complicated ancient rituals for gathering poisons described around the Mediterranean, it seems likely that in antiquity, too, shamans or mystical herbalists were responsible for creating the dangerous arrow poisons and their antidotes. In Gaul, for example, the Celtic wizard-priests called Druids may have prepared the poisons from henbane, hellebore, and snake venom.
An expert in concocting poisons would have mixed the lethal dose of hemlock for the Athenian philosopher Socrates, who was condemned to die by drinking hemlock in 399 BC. Hemlock juice (Conium maculatum) killed by “congealing and chilling the blood,” in the words of Aelian, but the effects are debated by modern philosophers and toxicologists. Did it really bring a pleasant death for Socrates, as famously described by his friend Plato? Or is death by hemlock excruciatingly painful, as others claim? Some believe that Socrates’ “gentle” death draught was actually hemlock mixed with enough opium and wine to numb the violent effects. At any rate, pure hemlock sap on a projectile point would bring sure death, and some ancient writers stated that hemlock was one of the poisons used by the fearsome Scythian archers of the Black Sea area.7
Yew, the very poisonous tree known as taxus in Latin, has symbolized danger and death since antiquity, and was long used to poison arrows. The tall, dark, and dense tree, often planted in graveyards, has a “gloomy, terrifying appearance,” observed Pliny, and was so lethal that “if creeping things go near it and touch it at all, they die.” Indeed, Pliny claimed that people who napped or picnicked beneath a yew tree had been known to perish. Yew berries contain a strong alkaloid poison, which brings sudden death by suppressing the heartbeat. Pliny also reported that in Spain, which had been brutally conquered by the Romans in the second century BC, souvenir canteens were carved from yew wood and sold to Roman tourists, many of whom died after drinking from the flasks. Could this have been a sly biological sabotage by the Spanish against their hated oppressors?
Belladonna, the deadly nightshade, was known as strychnos (hence the word strychnine) to the Romans. Proof that strychnine was a very old weapon poison lies in its other name, dorycnion. The Latin word means “spear drug” and, as Pliny commented, “before battle, spear points were dipped in dorycnion, which grows everywhere.” He also noted that strychnine-treated spears retained toxicity for at least thirty years. The poison causes dizziness, raving agitation, then coma and death. According to legend, ancient Gaelic berserkers took belladonna before battle as an “herb of courage.”
Yet another candidate for arrow poison was the sap of rhododendron, which flourishes throughout the Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, and in Asia. The showy pink and white flowers contain neurotoxins, and the nectar yields a poisonous honey, which was used as a biological weapon against the Romans in Asia Minor.8
Besides plants, poison creatures could provide arrow
drugs. An exotic bio-toxin of mysterious origins was said to be collected in the high mountains of India. First described by Ctesias, a Greek physician living in Persia (Iran) in the late fifth century BC, and then by Aelian in the third century AD, the powerful poison was supposedly excreted by a tiny orange “bird” called the dikairon. A miniscule amount of the “droppings” was supposed to bring death in a few hours, and this rare substance was one of the most costly gifts exported from the King of India to the King of Persia and kept as a valuable poison in the royal pharmacy—a useful agent for assassination or suicide.
But what was the poison? Scholars have speculated on the true identity of the dikairon, which was said to be the size of a tiny partridge egg. Some suggest that it was really a type of winged dung beetle whose droppings were confused with opium, another exotic product of India. The creature’s size does match the size of a dung beetle, and “droppings” may have been a Greek translation for insect excretions or insides. Certain types of dung beetles are even found in birds’ nests. The notion that the little orange bird was actually a dung beetle seems like a good answer, except for the fact that dung beetles are not toxic.
There are many other species of highly toxic beetles that can be used to make weapons, however. For example, Diamphidia beetle larvae are used to poison arrows by the present-day San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Could the ancient Greek tale of the little “droppings” of the mysterious dikairon have originated in a garbled report of a similar beetle toxin gathered in India? Some species of poisonous beetles were recognized in antiquity; for example, Aristotle and the toxicologist Nicander described deadly substances obtained from blister and staphylinus beetles, whose poisons are strong enough to kill cattle that accidentally eat them.
A recent discovery by entomological pharmacologists may solve the mystery of the fabled dikairon of India. In the 1980s, scientists began investigating the toxic properties of the little-studied Paederus beetles of the large Staphylinidae family (rove beetles), found in many areas of the world, including northern India. These predatory flying insects can be either orange and black, or entirely orange, and are about an inch long. Some species inhabit birds’ nests, a fact that may account for their being confused with tiny birds as the story traveled west. It transpires that the beetle was known to Chinese medicine twelve hundred years ago. A pharmacopia written by Ch’en in AD 739 accurately described the Paederus beetle, called ch’ing yao ch’ung, and stated that its “strong poison” could be used to remove tattoos, boils, and polyps from the skin.
Indeed, these blister beetles secrete a virulent poison and their insides or hemolymph contains pederin, one of the most powerful animal toxins in the world. On the skin, pederin raises angry, suppurating sores, and in the eyes it can cause blindness. But if pederin is ingested, or if it enters the bloodstream—as would occur with a poison arrow—the toxicity is more potent than cobra venom!9
In the Mediterranean, encounters with venomous jellyfish, sea urchins, and stingrays may have suggested the use of marine biotoxins as arrow poisons. The intense pain of a jellyfish sting is like a strong electric shock: it can depress the central nervous system and bring cardiac arrest and death. Sea urchins have been mentioned as another possible source of arrow poison, since the spines deliver a sting similar to a jellyfish’s, and life-threatening infections ensue if the wound is near tendons, nerves, or bone. Stingrays were also greatly feared for, as Aelian wrote, “nothing could withstand the barb of the Sting-ray (trygon). It wounds and kills instantly and fishermen dread its weapon.” It seems that people had experimented with the stingray’s weapon of self-defense. So deadly was the trygon, declared Aelian, that “if you stab the trunk of a large, healthy tree with the stingray spine, it withers as though scorched and all the leaves shrivel up and fall off.”
In the poetic justice of Greek myth, in which a poisoner is fated to die of poison, Odysseus succumbed to a wound from a spear tipped with the spine of a stingray, wielded by the son he never knew, Telegonus. The spear was forged for Telegonus by the god of invention and fire, Hephaestus, from a large ray killed by a Triton (merman) friend of Telegonus’s mother, Circe. Several species of toxic rays inhabit Mediterranean waters and the most common is the marbled stingray Dasyatis chrysonata marmorata (Trygon pastinaca). The stiff, viciously serrated spine is filled with extremely painful poison and makes a jagged, deep, and very bloody puncture. A stab in the chest or abdomen brings quick death. Without modern treatment, a wound anywhere would be likely to develop a fatal infection.
Some classical commentators have considered the legend of Odysseus’s strange death an example of overwrought creative myth-making but, as it turns out, the idea of a stingray spear is not so far-fetched. Modern discoveries in Central and South America give credence to the Greek legend of death by a stingray spine affixed to a spear. In the 1920s, archaeologists were mystified by numerous stingray spines that they found among worked obsidian javelin points in ancient burial sites in Mexico and Latin America. The wooden shafts had long since rotted away, but it seems obvious that the sharp ray spines had served as ready-made arrowheads. Confirmation comes from Brazil where, as late as the 1960s, the Suya Indians manufactured arrows from stingray barbs, which they attached to wooden shafts.10
By far, the most feared toxic creatures in the ancient world were hidden snakes whose fangs brought sudden, agonizing death. Numerous species of poisonous snakes inhabit the Mediterranean region and Asia. The terror aroused by the idea of serpents was intensified when a soldier was the target of arrows steeped in their venom.
FIGURE 8. Poisonous snakes were deeply feared in antiquity, but some ancients were adept in handling snakes and using their venom to make arrow poisons and antidotes. Amphora, detail, Perseus 1991.07.0133.
(University of Pennsylvania Museum)
According to Greek and Roman writers, archers who “sharpened their arrows with serpent’s poison” included the Gauls, Dacians, Dalmatians, Soanes of the Caucasus, Sarmatians of Iran, Getae of Thrace, Slavs, Africans, Armenians, Parthians dwelling between the Indus and Euphrates, and Indians. Poisoned arrows of various sorts were also known in China, demonstrated by ancient texts of the second century AD that describe the surgeon Hua T’o treating a general’s poison arrow wound (with a game of chess and wine serving as the anaesthetic). In the same era, the king of the Parthians was killed by a poisoned arrow in the arm, shot by the nomadic Tochari of the Chinese steppes.
In Ethiopia of the first century BC, according to the ancient geographer Strabo, a tribe called the Akatharti hunted elephants with arrows dipped “in the gall of serpents.” (“Ethiopia” referred to East Africa north of the Equator.) Several African cultures of more recent times still use snake venom on weapons: perhaps the Akatharti were the ancestors of the present-day Akamba people of Kenya in East Africa, elephant hunters renowned for their special arrow poison. According to the historian Silius Italicus, writing in about AD 80, Roman soldiers fighting in North Africa faced “twice harmful missiles, arrows imbued with serpent’s poison.” The Nasamonians of Libya were “skilled at disarming serpents of their fell poison,” and the Nubians of upper Egypt and Sudan steeped their throwing javelins “in noxious juices, thus disgracing the steel with poison.”11
Of all the groups who wielded envenomed arrows, however, the most inventive—and the most dreaded—were the Scythians of Central Asia. In the fifth century BC, Herodotus thrilled and shocked the Greeks with his reports of these barbarians who drank from the gilded skulls of their enemies and fashioned quivers from human arms with the hands still attached. The nomad women rode to war too, and were nicknamed “man-killers.”
Warlike nomads whose vast territory stretched from the Black Sea east across the steppes to Mongolia, the Scythians dominated the region until about AD 300. For four centuries they were invincible. They successfully repelled the Persian army led by King Darius I in the fifth century BC with their guerrilla raids and ambushes. Their consummate archery skills led the Athenians
to hire Scythian bowman to fight alongside hoplite phalanxes in the fifth century. In 331 BC, Scythian horse-archers even defeated the large army of Alexander the Great.
FIGURE 9. Battle between Greek hoplites and Scythian archers. The fallen warrior had decorated his shield with the image of a snake, perhaps to frighten enemies or to magically deflect snake venom arrows. Red-figure kylix.
(University of Pennsylvania Museum)
Scythian victories were due partly to their skill with the bow and their hit-and-run tactics, and partly to special weapon technologies. Indeed, they possessed the ultimate delivery system for pernicious biological agents: they had perfected a composite reflex bow whose power far exceeded other bows, allowing impressive velocity and accuracy at great distances. Each Scythian warrior carried more than 200 arrows into battle, and as crack archers and expert bio-warriors, the Scythians were truly the “sons of Hercules.”
When Herodotus traveled around the Black Sea interviewing Scythians in about 450 BC, he discovered that the nomads revered the hero Hercules—the mythical inventor of biological weapons—as their founding father. Parts of the story the nomads told were misunderstood and omitted by Herodotus, who relied on a series of translators, but some intriguing details emerge. What survives of the lost mythology of the Scythians hints that it may have had some parallels to the Greek myth of Hercules and the Hydra-snake, and may have explained the origin of the Scythians’ poison arrows. According to the Scythians, Hercules encountered a monstrous Viper-woman in Scythia and fathered three sons with her. He left his bow, arrows, and special belt to the youngest son, Scythes, the ancestor of the Scythians.
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs Page 7
