TOXICWARFARE AND POISONWEAPONS IN ANTIQUITY

Adrienne Mayor,Visiting Scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University, investigates
the origins and practice of poison warfare in Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs:
Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (Overlook, 2009)
How old is biological and chemical warfare?
When was the Pandoras Box of poison weapons first opened?
In fact, toxic warfare is not a modern invention.
The roots of humankinds genius for weaponizing the destructive forces of Nature are surprisingly ancient.
Biological weapons are based on viable, living organisms such as animal venoms and plant poisons or
pathogens that multiply in the body. Chemical weapons include poison gases, choking, blinding clouds of
smoke or dust, and violent, unquenchable incendiaries.
MYTHIC ORIGINS
Ways of turning Natures armory to military use were first imagined in an-
cient Greek mythology.
The great Greek hero Hercules killed the dreadful hundred-headed Hydra
monster and dipped his arrows in its venomthereby creating the worlds
first biological weapon.The ancient myth warns that poison weapons are very
hard to controlthey can result in unintended consequences. Some of the first
victims of Hercules Hydra arrows were his friends, the Centaurs, and Hercules
himself died of second-hand Hydra poisoning.
In Homers Iliad and Odyssey, arrows and spears tipped with poison helped
win the legendary Trojan War. But not without several serious friendly fire
accidents! One archer dropped one of his poison arrows on his own foot, an-
other was laid low by just a nick from a poison spear: both suffered terrible
agony.
The Hydra with its multiplying heads is a perfect symbol for the proliferating
ethical and practical dilemmas surrounding toxic warfare.
POISONS IN ANCIENT BATTLES
Toxic warfare was not just a mythical fantasy.Ancient Greek and Roman his-
torians document a remarkable array of biological and chemical weapons used
in real battles more than 2,000 years ago. No formal scientific knowledge or
technology was needed to create crude and sophisticated toxic armaments
just experience, observation, diabolical creativity, and a willingness to resort to
unfair tactics fashioned from whatever natural resources were at hand.
POISONWELLS AND POISON ARROWS
The earliest recorded instance of poisoning the wells of a besieged city oc-
curred in 590 BC.Athens and its allies contaminated the water supply of Kir-
rha, near Delphi, Greece, with the common poisonous plant hellebore.They
easily wiped out all the inhabitants.The same plant was used by the Roman
general Aquillius in 129 BC, to annihilate several rebellious towns in Asia
Minor. In both cases, the tactic killed civilians as well as combatants.
The most popular toxic weapons in the ancient world were arrows tipped
with poison plants or snake venoms.The Celts used henbane; the Greeks em-
ployed hellebore; Eurasian nomads used aconite (monkshood) and snake
venom; and the ancient Romans treated their spears with deadly nightshade
(belladonna).
Hellebore (top); Henbane (bottom) Belladonna (top); Monkshood (bottom)
Snake venom crystallizes and can remain viable on arrow points.Scythicon,
the arrow drug created by the ancient Scythians of the Central Asia steppes,
went beyond mere venom. It was a nasty concoction of putrefied Caucasian
vipers (left), dung, and blood. Just a scratch from one of these projectiles would
be lethal, dealing instant death from the venom or fatal infection with gan-
grene and tetanus.
Poisoned javelins and arrows wielded by defenders of a fort in Pakistan
brought gruesome death to the soldiers of Alexander the Great in 327 BC.The
ghastly symptoms were described in vivid detail by the ancient Greeks histori-
ans, allowing us to identify which snake venom was usedRussells viper
(right).
Another source of venom was entomological. One of the earliest toxic tactics
was to plug up beehives full of angry bees and catapult them at the enemy. In
AD 199, the defenders of the fortress of Hatra (Iraq) repelled the besieging
Roman legions by hurling scorpion grenadesclay pots filled with live Death
Stalker scorpions from the desert.
An unusual natural toxin created by bees was wielded against the Roman army
led by Pompey against Mithradates of Pontus (northernTurkey), in 65 BC.The
enemy placed wild honeycombs along Pompeys route.The soldiers feasted on
the honey. Reeling and babbling, they collapsed en masse, wracked by diarrhea
and vomiting.The enemy slaughtered over a 1,000 men paralyzed by the natu-
rally occurring neurotoxin (grayanotoxin) in Rhododendron nectar.
TOXIC FUMES AS AWEAPON
Chemically enhanced fire was used very early in human history.The Greek
historianThucydides described the first two recorded instances. During the
PeloponnesianWar, in 429 BC, the Spartans attacked Plateia by creating a huge,
super-hot fire fueled with pine resin (turpentine) and sulphur.Toxic sulphur
dioxide gas was the result. Plateia was nearly overcome, until the wind changed
and saved the city. In 424 BC, at Delium, the Spartans invented a flame-throw-
ing device with iron tubes and bellows to pump toxic sulphur dioxide gas at
the enemy.
The earliest archaeological evidence for the use of poison gas as a weapon was
announced in 2009 at the Archaeological Institute of America meeting. At the
battle of Dura-Europos (Syria) in AD 256, Persian besiegers created a fire in a
tunnel to repel the Roman defenders of the fort.The Persians added bitumen
(petroleum) and sulphur, which produced a cloud of asphyxiating sulphur
dioxide. Archaeologists have recreated the scene in the underground passage
from the evidence of suphur crystals, extensive fire damage, and a heap of 20
Roman skeletons. A well-preserved skeleton, in Persian chain mail, reveals that
the man who ignited the toxic fire succumbed to the fumes before he could
escape. His fate recalls the ancient warnings in the myth of Hercules and the
Hydra, that toxic weapons often have unintended consequences.
Details of these mythic and historical examples and many more from Greece,
Rome, North Africa, the Mideast, India, and China, are found in Adrienne
Mayor,Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs (Overlook, 2009).