Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs
Page 29
27 Appian, “Mithridatic Wars” 12.18-23. Dio Cassius 36.4-6; and Xiphilinus 36.1b. Croddy 2002, 128.
28 Dio Cassius 36.4-6. Pliny 2.235. Muhammad at Ta’fiq: Hashmi forthcoming. The strategic open oil pits near Hatra, Samosata, and Tigranocerta were guarded by early Muslim “oil czars,” see Bilkadi 1995, 25. The ruins of Samosata (Samsat, Turkey), the ancient capital of Commagene, were inundated in the late twentieth century by the Ataturk Dam. These rich petroleum fields now produce tens of thousands of barrels of oil in northern Iraq and southeastern Turkey.
29 Dio Cassius, Xiphilinus 36.1b. Appian, “Mithridatic Wars” 12.77. Pliny 2.235; 34.93; see also 35.178-82. The ancient statue of Hercules in the tunic has not survived. Ironically, in the second century BC, before Roman armies had experienced attacks by fiery naphtha, Roman soldiers desecrated the famous painting of Hercules dying in the poison robe, painted in 360 BC by the Greek artist Aristeides. During their sack of Corinth, it was among the fine paintings that the soldiers pulled to the ground and used to throw dice on. Strabo 8.6.23.
30 Plutarch, Lucullus. Mayor 1997b, 58. Seneca, Epistle 14.4-6. Martial, Epigrams 4.86, 10.25. Juvenal 1.155, 8.235 and notes. Coleman 1990, 60-61.
Afterword
1 Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe 5.1295-1308. Appian, “Mithridatic Wars” 12.74. Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea: “Poisoned Island” 1999; Pala 2003. On worst-case scenarios posed by biochemical weapons, see Miller et al. 2001. Numerous incidents of bio-weapon accidents between 1915-46 are given in Harris and Paxman 1982, 15-19, 28, 42, 56-57, 77-79. For a survey of U.S. bio-weapons accidents up to 2003, see Piller 2003. Thanks to Flora Davis for helpful comments.
2 Incinerating and burying biochemical weapons: Leary 2002; Wald 2002. Vitrification of nuclear weapons material is carried out at Savannah River, South Carolina. Burial of transuranic (high-level radioactive) materials from nuclear weapons in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad began in 1999. Early boreholes in the salt beds were rejected because of fears of potential leakage due to geologic deformations and pressurized brine, but the present site is said to have been “stable for more than 200 million years,” so the weapon materials are deemed to be safely stored forever. WIPP Web site: www.wipp.carlsbad.nm.us. Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management information on Yucca Mountain: www.ocrwm.doe.gov.
3 Pala 2003. Denver: “Nerve Gas” 2000. The U.S. Geological Service determined that leakage of toxic fluids from chemical weapons buried in deep wells at Rocky Mountain Arsenal reduced friction and allowed slippage along fault planes, resulting in earthquakes. Thanks to Will Keener, Sandia National Laboratories, personal correspondence, February 10-14, 2003, for facts and helpful comments about Rocky Mountain Arsenal and the Carlsbad WIPP and Yucca Mountain sites. Washington, DC and other chemical munitions dump sites: Tucker 2001. Presidio: “Vile Finds” 2003.
4 The plans for Yucca Mountain primarily anticipate burial of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors, with the possibility of including nuclear weapons materials. The suggestions of the expert panels were solicited beginning in 1993 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Sandia National Laboratories in the planning for the Carlsbad weapons burial site, but the concepts, updated with the latest technologies, would also be applied at Yucca Mountain and similar sites. Pollon 2002; Hutchinson 2002; Pethokoukis 2002. Anthropologist Ward Goodenough quoted in Forest 2002. Detailed DOE information on proposals for warning succeeding generations ten thousand years into the future, based on Trauth et al. 1993, was provided by Steve Casey, WIPP Carlsbad Field Office, February 12, 2003.
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