Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs

by Adrienne Mayor

  In a widely publicized attack in March 1988, for instance, Saddam Hussein responded to Iraqi Kurds’ resistance by bombing villagers with poison gas. An estimated five thousand men, women, and children were killed. After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, trial testimonies before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the late 1990s revealed that the South African government planned to systematically poison citizens who protested apartheid in the 1980s and early ’90s. The tale of Clearchus’s premeditated elimination of his own citizens and soldiers by forcing them to endure a deadly environment also stirs disquieting memories of well-documented, clandestine U.S. government experiments with nuclear, bacterial, and chemical agents on its own citizens and soldiers during the Cold War of the twentieth century.

  As Grmek has pointed out—and as demonstrated by the numerous ancient examples of manipulating poisons and disease-ridden atmospheres to sicken foes on a large scale—it would be a mistake to assume that the ancient preoccupation with “miasmas” or “vapors” as the source of illness presented any conceptual “obstacle to utilizing contagion for military ends.” In antiquity, long before the modern terminology of epidemiology was developed, experience and observation led to insights into how disease could be used as a blunt instrument of war. Could that instrument somehow be refined into a capacity to spread epidemics among entire populations?16

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  A CASKET OF PLAGUE IN THE TEMPLE OF BABYLON

  The plague arose in Babylonia,

  when a pestilential vapor escaped from

  a golden casket in the temple of Apollo.

  —JULIUS CAPITOLINUS

  ONE OF THE MOST oft-cited incidents in the early annals of biological warfare occurred in AD 1346. That year, the Mongols catapulted bubonic plague-ridden corpses of their own soldiers over the walls of Kaffa, a Genoese fortress on the Black Sea, thereby introducing the dread disease in Europe. This macabre incident occurred centuries before epidemiology was formally understood, but modern science shows that even if the cadavers themselves were not the main vector of the flea-borne Black Plague, inhalation of airborne Yersinia pestis microbes remaining on the corpses or their clothing could cause the highly fatal respiratory form of the plague. To carry out an act of germ warfare like this, the Mongols only needed to know that proximity to corpses of people who had died of an epidemic would almost certainly lead to more deaths.

  Apart from the biological outcome of the Mongols’ act, the psychological impact was horrendous, and horror has always been one of the goals of biological warfare. Terrifying the enemy was the sole object of a catapulting incident in 207 BC, when the Romans hurled the head of the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal into the camp of his brother, Hannibal. Hasdrubal’s head probably carried nothing more contagious than lice (although lice can in fact carry typhus), but the act served to demoralize Hannibal, dashing his hopes of getting the reinforcements he needed to conquer Italy. Interestingly, Hannibal himself would later use catapults to fling venomous vipers at a different enemy in Asia Minor.1

  So far no clear reports of catapulting disease-bearing cadavers or clothing have come to light before the fourteenth century, but the purposeful spread of contagion among enemies by other means could have occurred much earlier than Kaffa. Although the exact mechanisms of infection remained mysterious, people of many ancient cultures recognized that “foul and deadly miasmas arose” from plague-stricken cadavers and that cloth or other items that had touched a plague victim could be deadly. That knowledge made possible the use of disease-ridden animals, and people and their clothing, as weapons of war.

  An incident reported by the historian Appian described how a besieging army was defeated by contagion from dead bodies. In 74 BC, King Mithridates of Pontus began a long siege of the city of Cyzicus on the Black Sea. The defenders of Cyzicus resisted with every strategy they could come up with, from breaking the invaders’ siege machines with rope nooses to hurling burning pitch. As the siege wore on, Mithridates’ troops began to suffer from hunger and sickness. Then, when “corpses that were thrown out unburied in the neighborhood brought on a plague,” Mithridates gave up the siege and fled. Although it is not clear if the defenders deliberately spread pestilence by throwing out their dead, or whether the corpses belonged to the besiegers themselves, the account shows that the link between the corpses and the plague was well understood.2

  Greek and Latin historians demonstrated perceptive insights about epidemics, noting that those who tended the sick fell ill and that unburied or unburned corpses spread disease. As the Roman historian Livy remarked in the first century BC, during epidemics “the dead proved fatal to the sick and the sick equally fatal to the healthy.” Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian War, described the great Plague of Athens, which originated in Egypt, spread to Persia and Libya, and arrived in Athens in the summer 430 BC. The virulent epidemic (probably smallpox, but possibly typhus, measles, or bubonic plague, according to competing theories offered by modern medical historians) killed more than a quarter of the population. Thucydides, one of those who survived the plague, recognized the role of contact with the sick in transmitting the disease.

  FIGURE 15. It was realized early in human history that contact with corpses of victims of epidemics, or their possessions, could spread disease. Roman skeleton mosaic, Via Appia, Italy.

  Some scholars have noted that the symptoms suffered by Hercules’ dying in the Hydra-poisoned cloak share some similarities to death from smallpox. In Sophocles’ version of the myth, written in about 430 BC when the epidemic was raging in Athens, the playwright used medical terminology for pustules and plague to describe the burning torment of the tunic. His play reflects the knowledge that not only poison but disease could be transferred by clothing. That idea was also expressed by Cedrenus, a historian who described the Plague of Cyprian (a pandemic that spread from Egypt to Scotland in about AD 250), when he remarked that the disease was transmitted not just by direct contact but also by clothing.3

  Actually, the recognition that diseases could be transmitted by contact with the ill and their personal belongings goes back much earlier in recorded history, to ancient Sumer (in Syria). The evidence comes from several royal letters inscribed on cuneiform tablets in about 1770 BC, from the archives of Mari, a Sumerian outpost on the Euphrates in Mesopotamia. One of the letters forbade people from an infected town from traveling to a healthy town, to avoid “infecting the whole country.” Another letter described a woman whose cup, chair, bed, and physical presence were to be avoided because of the danger of contracting her disease, which was very contagious (mustahhizu, literally “keeps on catching or kindling”).

  The modern epidemiological term for articles like cups or clothing that harbor infectious pathogens is fomites. The principles of fomite contagion and quarantine were evidently understood 3,800 years ago, but the accounts of epidemics were often expressed in symbolic language or metaphors such as “angels of death smiting armies” or gods shooting “arrows of plague.” Because of the metaphorical imagery, descriptions of epidemics in Near Eastern and biblical texts, and in Greek mythology have often been viewed by scholars as superstitious explanations, even though they may have been based on sound empirical knowledge, as shown in the Mari letters.4

  The Kaffa event of 1346 is considered by historians to be the first documented case of a deliberate attempt to spread contagion to achieve military victory, but much earlier incidents of transmitting disease for strategic purposes can be found in the ancient sources. Some of the evidence is legendary or inconclusive, like the Cyzicus event, but many other historical accounts record clear intentions to transmit disease to enemies in chillingly feasible ways.

  The earliest clear examples of deliberate attempts to spread contagion appear in cuneiform tablets of the ancient Hittite civilization of Anatolia (1500-1200 BC). The tablets tell of driving animals and at least one woman infected with epidemics out of the city and into enemy territory, accompanied by a prayer: “The country that accep
ts them shall take this evil plague.” The intention is unmistakable and the means would have been quite effective.5

  The ancient Hittites and Babylonians worshipped the archer-god Irra, who was said to shoot arrows of plague at enemies in military contexts. In Greek mythology, it was the god Apollo who destroyed armies with his invisible plague-arrows—and by sending infestations of rodents, which were widely recognized in antiquity as harbingers of pestilence. These mythic images reflect the fact that epidemics did frequently coincide with military invasions, due to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, stress, lack of food and pure water, infestations of rodents and other disease vectors, and exposure to new germ pools. When people of antiquity implored the gods to inflict pestilence on invaders, diseases that broke out among the enemy forces were seen as answered prayers. In an example from the fourth century BC, the people of Pachynus, Sicily, prayed to Apollo to strike the approaching Carthaginian fleet with pestilence. And, in fact, in 396 BC, a devastating epidemic did break out among the Carthaginians, causing them to abandon their plan to attack Sicily.6

  It must not have been long before humans began to wonder if, instead of relying on requests to the gods, they could also take matters into their own hands and sow contagion and biological calamities among their adversaries by practical means, as the Hittites did by sending infectious animals into enemy lands. Some commentators have speculated on whether the ten plagues that Moses called down on the Egyptians (in about 1300 BC), might represent the earliest incidents of “using nature to gain strategic goals.”

  Thinking along these lines, one might wonder if the first plague, the red waters of the Nile that killed fish and fouled the water for drinking, could have been due to deliberate contamination by the Israelites. According to Exodus, the Pharaoh’s “magicians” were able to produce a similar phenomenon, which would place them among the world’s first biochemists. Indeed, techniques for poisoning fish, by dumping powdered roots of deadly plants mixed with toxic chemicals such as lime, were also practiced in early Roman times in the Mediterranean, according to Pliny the Elder. The blood-red, polluted water of the Nile, however, could have been a natural phenomenon such as an algae bloom or an influx of red sediment.

  Seasonal occurrences account for the frogs and insects of the second, third, and fourth plagues, as well as for the hailstorm, locusts, and hot dust storm (khamsin) of the seventh, eighth, and ninth plagues. But what about the diseases of the fifth and sixth plagues? In the fifth plague sent by Yahweh, the Egyptians’ herds and flocks were killed, followed by the sixth plague, a rain of “ashes” that caused black boils on beasts as well as humans. The progression here from infected animals to infected humans strongly suggests that what is being described is the spread of pulmonary anthrax, and the boils caused by powdery black “ashes” could describe the black sores of the cutaneous form of anthrax (the word comes from the Greek for “coal”).

  A similar plague appeared in Homer’s Iliad, when the Greeks laying siege to Troy in about 1200 BC were assailed by a plague sent by Apollo. Homer’s details are realistic: first to sicken from Apollo’s “black arrows” were the pack animals and dogs; then the men began to die. Outbreaks of anthrax are devastating to both livestock and humans. The “Black Bane” anthrax epidemic that swept Europe in the 1600s, for example, killed millions of animals and at least sixty thousand people. Like smallpox and other infectious material, anthrax spores can remain viable for a very long time and they can conceivably be manipulated by humans. But natural cycles of anthrax have attacked periodically throughout history, and the fact that the Israelites’ cattle were spared while the Egyptian herds were struck has been attributed to the separate pastures of the Israelites.

  Although neither the Iliad nor Exodus implicates humans in the anthrax-like plagues, the priests of Apollo and Yahweh took credit for summoning the epidemics, and that definitely reveals both the human desire and intention to wage what we now call germ warfare. The ten plagues of Exodus were most likely a series of natural calamities that were advantageous for the Israelites, but inherent in the story is the strong suggestion that plagues and biological disasters could be powerful weapons against enemies.7

  The tenth plague, the sudden death of the Egyptians’ firstborn children, has been called the ultimate biological weapon. Although the Israelites’ children were spared the final plague, again there is no hint of human agency in Exodus. It is true, however, that if one could systematically destroy the genetic material of an enemy people that would indeed constitute biological strategy with a devastating effect on the population. Blocking an enemy’s genetic reproduction by killing entire populations or, alternatively, by slaying all males and/or systematically raping the women was an effective way of wiping out an enemy “root and branch” in antiquity.

  The most notorious modern examples of such biological strategies are the Nazis’ attempt to eliminate all Jews and Gypsies in World War II, and the ethnic cleansing and systematic rapes by soldiers that occurred in former Yugoslavia and Burma and in Rwanda in the late twentieth century. After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation investigations (1998) revealed that government-sponsored doctors had researched “a race-specific bacterial weapon” and “ways to sterilize . . . the black population.” In 2003, a U.S. military report described a proposal for creating “non-lethal” weapons based on “genetic alteration.” With the very real ability to manipulate genetic material in the laboratory, the specter of an “ultimate biological weapon” that affects enemy DNA looms in the near future.8

  Ancient examples of attempts to interfere with genetic reproduction are numerous. Before the onset of the ten plagues in Egypt, for instance, the Pharaoh had ordered midwives to kill all male offspring born to Hebrew women. Later, in the first century BC, King Herod’s preemptive biological strike—his order to kill all Jewish boys under age two—was another example of the strategy. In Greek myth, during the sack of Troy, the Greek warriors killed the infant son of Hector to make sure that none of the Trojan champion’s stock would survive (the tragic scene was featured in many Greek vase paintings). Greek and Roman historians report wars in which the victors killed all the males of an enemy population and raped and abducted the women en masse (the legendary Rape of the Sabine women by the founders of Rome is a famous example). Polyaenus referred to this legend when he noted that the Roman founders invited the Italian natives, the Sabini, to a festival and then abducted all the virgins. The Indian manual on devious ways of war, the Arthashastra, insinuated that there were secret ways of interfering with opponents’ reproduction: “When an archer shoots an arrow he may miss his target, but intrigue can kill even the unborn.”9

  The Latin expression pestilentia manu facta, “man-made pestilence,” shows that intentionally transmitted contagion was a suspected biological weapon in Roman times. The term was coined by the philosopher Seneca, Nero’s advisor in the first century AD, to refer to epidemics attributed to deliberate human activity. Livy and other Latin historians referred to the malicious transmission of plagues without giving specifics, but Dio Cassius, a Greek historian born about AD 164, reported on two man-made epidemics in detail.

  According to Dio Cassius, the plagues were begun by saboteurs acting in Rome and in the provinces, apparently to spread chaos and undermine unpopular emperors’ authority. The first occurred before his time, in AD 90-91, during the reign of Domitian (himself suspected of poisoning his brother and predecessor Titus). Conspirators dipped needles in deleterious substances and secretly pricked many victims, who perished of a deadly illness. Dio Cassius says that the plague-spreaders were caught and punished after informers spoke out.

  A similar plot occurred in Dio Cassius’s lifetime, during the reign of Commodus. Commodus had succeeded his father, the emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died in AD 180 of a plague that was brought back to Italy and Europe by Roman troops fighting in Babylonia. While Commodus was emperor, in about AD 189, another plague wracked the empire, killing 2,000 peo
ple a day in Rome. This pestilence was said to have been spread by saboteurs who “smeared deadly drugs on tiny needles [and] infected many people by means of these instruments.”

  These accusations may or may not have been true, but they do reflect the idea circulating in antiquity that humans—not just the gods—could propagate disease at will. The method, sticking victims with infected needles, was certainly plausible, and rumors of bio-sabotage aroused panic in Rome. Indeed, the rumors were in themselves a form of bio-terror that has proven effective through history. During the ravages of Black Plague in the Middle Ages, rumors that enemies were deliberately spreading the disease caused widespread hysteria. Similarly, fears fueled by rumors rose in the United States in the aftermath of the anthrax attacks of 2001 and amid continuing alarms over bio-terrorist activities.10

  In India, during the fourth century BC, the ruthless strategist Kautilya demonstrated a clear intention to transmit infectious diseases to enemies. In the Arthashastra, he claimed that burning frog entrails and plant toxins would produce a smoke that would infect adversaries with gonorrhea; the addition of human blood to the recipe was supposed to bring a wasting lung disease. Powdered leeches, bird and mongoose tongues, donkey milk, plus jimsonweed (a toxic plant related to deadly nightshade) and other poisons were intended to cause fevers, deafness, and various diseases. Four different recipes were said to spread leprosy: one called for special seeds kept for a week in the mouth of a white cobra or lizard, then mixed with cow dung and parrot and cuckoo eggs. The ingredients of the concoctions may seem silly to modern readers but, once again, one of Kautilya’s stated purposes was to terrify his enemies with biological threats.