Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (review)

This book about chemical and biological weaponry in the ancient and classical Eurasian civilizations is Herodotean in its credulity and Thucydidean in its documentation. Like Herodotus, Adrienne Mayor appears to report every tall tale that comes to hand. Like Thucydides, she leaves many sources unidentified. Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs is the result of Mayor's consultation with fifty ancient and classical authors and her sampling of the growing body of recent scholarship on her topic. She has produced a fascinating catalog of poisons, incendiaries, reptiles, insects, burning pigs, infectious diseases, and ersatz weaponry, all of which she sees as precursors of modern chemical and biological agents of warfare. Fascinating, if suspect.

The catalog and its modern relevance depend on Mayor's definitions. She addresses what she calls "toxic weaponry" but defines biological and chemical warfare as "the manipulation of the forces and elements of nature to insidiously attack or destroy an agent's biological functions" (p. 28). She further notes that "the biological-chemical weapons arsenal also comprises disabling or harmful agents created through biology, chemistry, and physics to act on the body" (p. 28). Even imagined but unrealized (and unrealizable) weapons are grist for her mill because she believes that "conscious intention" is a valid criterion for inclusion. Except for psychological weapons, it is difficult to think of any instrument of war left outside the omnium-gatherum she has invented.

Some of Mayor's accounts are illuminating and provocative. She has found innumerable tales of poisoned arrows in antiquity, the poisons coming from both plants and animals. Similarly astonishing is the variety of ways in which the ancients threw snakes, bees, scorpions, and insects at their enemies. Islamic naphtha troops, soldiers specializing in incendiary warfare, are only the most remarkable of the many warriors who harnessed fire, though they hardly qualify as "ancient." Military historians might profitably pay more attention to these unconventional arms, and historians of science and technology might further consider the long record of military research and development.

But the many strengths of this book are diluted by Mayor's lack of discrimination. When Hannibal leaves uncooked beef for Roman soldiers to gorge themselves on, he meets her criterion for biological warfare. When Xenophon's troops get sick eating naturally poisonous honey, they are victims of yet more biological warfare. When Archimedes burns the Roman ships besieging Syracuse by reflecting sunlight off soldiers' shields, Mayor says that he is engaging in chemical warfare because he uses fire. She includes fireships for the same reason. Elephants, she claims, were "intelligent and tasteful lovers of all things beautiful" who "abhorred ugly things" (pp. 199–200). Thus they could be driven off by the presumably ugly horns of rams. This story qualifies as biological warfare in Mayor's world because animals were being used as weapons.

The author is no less credulous in evaluating modern sources. She reports without skepticism a seventeenth-century account of a Chinese general who taught monkeys to use firearms. She reports that during the 1989 invasion of Panama, United States forces "apparently" tested a laser gun that incinerates people. She considers it relevant that rats and mice, animals purportedly used in antiquity to spread disease and eat the enemy's leather equipment, are used in modern laboratories to help develop biological weapons. The logical connection between the two activities is not explained.

Mayor quotes material without citation and instances abound in which she offers no evidence for her assertions or cites dubious evidence. She takes ancient accounts as literally true. She sometimes qualifies her assertions with expressions such as "could describe," "might serve," "it was rumored," and "there were allegations." Such rhetorical evasions are presented as evidence that chemical and biological warfare has been around since the beginning of recorded history.

It should be added that Mayor's book presents more than enough solid evidence to make that case. By gilding...