Bees, snakes, germs - any weapon in a pinch

The Vancouver Sun | 11/29/2003 | Jay Currie

[TrebleRebel]

If you are under Roman siege in the middle of a desert, a scorpion bomb seems like a very good idea. Collect a bunch of lethal scorpions and, very carefully, seal them in clay pots. Hurl the pots at the attackers as needed.

That's exactly what the defenders of Hatra, just south of Mosul in today's Iraq, did in 198 AD. The siege was lifted in 20 days.

As Adrienne Mayor writes in her intriguing book Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, scorpions weren't the only stinging animals pressed into service in the ancient world. A clay pot full of hornets was unwelcome to a man in armour. The famous Carthaginian general, Hannibal, won a sea battle in which he was greatly outnumbered by jars of vipers being catapulted on to the decks of the opposing galleys.

Snake venom, plant poisons and -- my favourite -- hallucinogenic toxic honey produced by bees collecting nectar from rhododendrons, were all "weaponized." Brave men fled flights of viper-envenomed arrows fired by Scythian archers. Armies were stupefied by hellebore- and mandrake-contaminated wine and tainted honey left for them to find when they overran enemy camps.

If Greek Fire were simply a catalogue of the ingenious and gruesome ways ancient civilizations fought one another, it would be a fascinating but limited book. Fortunately, Mayor is more interested in the conflicting attitudes the ancients had towards biological and chemical terror weapons. A folklorist specializing in early science, she is well equipped to look at the practical and moral dilemmas inherent in this warfare.

Antique biological and chemical weapons were very much like their modern counterparts. After all, says Mayor, "the basic concepts of the diverse biochemical weapons that were wielded in historical battles -- from poisons and contagion to animal allies and hellish fire -- were first imagined in ancient mythology. The archaic myths even anticipated the moral and practical quandaries that have surrounded biological and chemical armaments since their invention."

Take, for example, the myth of Pandora's box. It tells us that Pandora released "plagues and pestilence." Mayor says this suggests that the ancient Greeks knew that infection could be kept in a sealed container.

Although the ancient world did not have weapons-grade anthrax or genetically modified plague or smallpox, it certainly had people and animals suffering from all those diseases. Much of the ancient world knew they could be spread by contact with the corpses of the infected, or even their clothing or drinking cups.

Mayor points to the earliest version of this strategy, as practised around 1500 BC by the Hittite civilization of Anatolia. It drove animals and "at least one woman infected with epidemics out of the city and into enemy territory, accompanied by a prayer: 'The country that accepts them shall take this evil plague.' The intention is unmistakable and the means would have been quite effective."

It was a small step from there to placing infected clothing in sealed caskets to await discovery by invading troops. Mayor suggests that a version of Pandora's box may have slain the Philistines when they stole the Ark of the Covenant.

Ethically, there was a good deal of conflict about using anything except bare steel in honourable combat. Letting loose the plague was even more reprehensible.

At the same time, wars were fought to be won and the consequences of losing -- murder, pillage, rape and enslavement -- meant that many cultures looked to biological and chemical weapons.

The fourth-century BC Indian writer and strategist Kautilya advocated full-on biological warfare, complete with formulas for gonorrhea-producing smoke and "four different recipes [which] were said to spread leprosy," in his Arthashastra. One of Kautilya's stated purposes was to terrify his enemies with biological threats.

Terror, collateral damage, blowback, unintended consequences -- Mayor skilfully shows how ancient cultures found the dilemmas posed by biological and chemical weapons just as horrific and difficult as we do today.

[SLB]

During the years of the "black death" didn't armies use bodies of those who died from the plague as projectiles from catapults?

[TrebleRebel]

This is how Meselson arrived at his bee feces theory.

[facedown]

Ethically, there was a good deal of conflict about using anything except bare steel in honourable combat.

Jacketed lead works for me.

[Fzob]

I believe catapulting the dead at some battle in Asia (?) is what is thought to have brought the plague to Europe. The losers carried the plague back to Italy after it was defeated.

During the plague years I don't believe there was much war going on in Europe. They were too busy burying the 25 million that died. Nearly one third of the population at the time.

[Fzob]

I have to correct myself. Here's the info I was trying to dreage up from memory. Google is a wonderful thing.

The Coming of the Plague to Italy

In 1334 an epidemic which would eventually kill two-thirds of China's inhabitants struck the northeastern Chinese province of Hopei, claiming up to 90% of the population - some 5,000,000 people. Carried along trade routes, the "Black Death," as it would soon be called, began to work its way west, striking India, Syria, and Mesopotamia.

In 1346, the Plague came to Kaffa, a Genoese cathedral city and a port central to the successful Genoese trade industry located on the Crimean Peninsula of the Black Sea. The Tartar forces of Kipchak khan Janibeg, backed by Venetian forces - competitors of the Genoese - had laid siege to Kaffa in hopes of removing the Genoese from one of the cornerstones of Europe's defense against Eastern attack and Genoa's dominance of east-west trade. Kaffa was helpless, barely able to sustain even the crudest living conditions. Finding its chief means of supplies cut off, Kaffa spent the next year watching itself decline into a hopeless state.

But then, in 1347, to the Italians' delight, their opponents began to die off at an alarming rate - Janibeg's army was overcome by the Plague. Janibeg had no choice but to call off his siege, but not until he performed one last act of warfare against Genoa. Using the catapults designed to throw boulders and fireballs over the walls of fortified cities like Kaffa, Janibeg launched the Plague infested corpses of his dead men into the city. The Italians quickly dumped these bodies back into the sea, but the damage was done. Due to the squalid conditions forced upon Kaffa by the siege, it was ripe for the quick desolation of the Plague.

Hoping to escape the quickly spreading disease, four Genoese ships, thought to be untainted, departed from Kaffa. They sailed home to Italy.

[boris]

"If you are under Roman siege in the middle of a desert, a scorpion bomb seems like a very good idea. Collect a bunch of lethal scorpions and, very carefully, seal them in clay pots. Hurl the pots at the attackers as needed."

Didn't Dr. Phibes use a variation of this in his second movie?

--Boris

[Cronos]

The plague was carried by rats who came along with the Mongols. Europe and Asia are not really two separate ontinents as is Africa, they're too intertwined. When the Chinese HAn dynasty repulsed the Mongols, the Mongols pushed the Huns who in turn pushed the Slavs into the Caucasus and the Slavs kicked the Germans out of the Caucasus into Germany, pushign the Celts and the Romans.

fourth-century BC Indian writer and strategist Kautilya

They also had a guy who created Macchiavelli's strategies 1700 years before him -- Chanakya.

[boris]

"Meselson"

Meselson? Didn't he write a symphony or something?

Or win the Nobel Prize in Physics?

--Boris

[TrebleRebel]

BEE-FECES THEORY STILL HAS NO STING

[archy]

During the years of the "black death" didn't armies use bodies of those who died from the plague as projectiles from catapults?

Technically, no. Body parts, maybe.

Catapultum:

Trebuchets:

Arbalest:

See following, to describe the use of a counterweighted trebuchet to throw a projectile of circa 100 pounds a distance of 200 meters, probably sufficient for the sort of projectile you suggest.

Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam!

[Tijeras_Slim]

You forgot El Launcho Grande from Moriarty NM, which tipped the balance of power in the great pumpkin wars of the late 90's.

[gaijin]

marking

[StriperSniper]

The fourth-century BC Indian writer and strategist Kautilya advocated full-on biological warfare, complete with formulas for gonorrhea-producing smoke

Ho' bombs!

[coloradan]

Armies were stupefied by hellebore, and, Mandrake, contaminated wine and tainted honey left for them to find when they overran enemy camps.

Mandrake, I told you that only pure grain alcohol and rainwater are the only things a man should drink.

[archy]

You forgot El Launcho Grande from Moriarty NM, which tipped the balance of power in the great pumpkin wars of the late 90's.

Punkin' chunkin' is in another category entirely, whether in the mechanical or pressure vessel propulsion classes.

But there's nothing as grand as a great siege engine flinging it's projectile downrange, particularly when that projectile is a piano. [Nothing as grand, get it?] While pumpkins are interesting and fun to watch in their own right, the folks in England who tired of using a Volkswagen Beetle as their target and are now busy with a design that will use it as the projectile instead offer hope that such developments will be as worthy of interest in the coming century as in the last one.

Beware, however. If ever there were weapons who possessed their users and operators into greater and greater excess and flights of folly, these are them. Kids, please don't try this at home with family pets or baby sister. Unless you think you can set a distance record, of course. Meoooooooooooooooow!

-archy-/-

[genefromjersey]

That SOB Meselson has much to answer for !

[Darksheare]

I promise I won't build one and fling any annoying family members into any nearby lakes.
*fingers crossed*

[SAMWolf]

Run Away! Run Away!

[Darksheare]

Trojan Rabbit!