The Greek Fire. [EB. 



sorcery, he calls ' Medea's oil.' But the historian seems to have bor- 

 rowed this term from Pliny, who calls naptha EXatov M^s*a, a sort of 

 proof, that naptha entered into its composition. Cinnamus also calls the 

 Greek fire TTu ? M^oxov. 



'' All those names bespeak some resinous or oily compound, such as 

 might be used in fire ships, or for other purposes, with or without nitre. 

 But Leo uses a different expression, when he calls it TIv pra B^ovrti? KO.I 

 xaTTxy, (fire, with thunder and smoke). We must conclude {hat he is 

 speaking of some explosive substance into which nitre entered as an 

 ingredient, and that consequently there were more Greek fires than one. 

 Of the terms used by others, I need mention only that of the author of 

 the ' Gesta Dei per Francos,' who calls naptha 'oleum incendiarinm ;' 

 making it further probable that this ingredient entered into some of those 

 compounds." 



It was natural to suppose that the writers of those days should have 

 given very different accounts of the power and fabrication of this formid- 

 able means of hostility. The spirit of mystery, which has gathered so 

 much factitious interest round the capital of the Sultan in late times, 

 appears to have thrown the same veil over the transactions and resources 

 of the palace of the Constantines. Magic was resorted to for the origin 

 of all extraordinary inventions, and the instrument which the sorcerer 

 was declared to have invented, was to be degraded by no less potent 

 hand. The Byzantine historians were the legitimate ancestors of the 

 romancers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are often not 

 much more matter of fact than the " historical novelists" of the nine- 

 teenth. The mighty weapon, concealed from all human knowledge but 

 in its effects, the grand defence of the last bulwark of the Eastern empire, 

 the destroyer of fleets, and the overthrower of armies, might well be pre- 

 sumed to be described with all the mystery and magniloquence of a 

 singularly imaginative people. 



When the work of description came into the hands of foreigners, if 

 the magniloquence w T as lost, the mystery remained the same. The Spe- 

 culum Regale, in detailing a number of engines of ancient war, rushes into 

 strange yet high sounding allusion to the Greek fire. Omnium autem 

 quce enumeravimus, 8$c. Or, to give the passage to the general reader. 

 " But, of all the arms and machines which we have enumerated, the 

 most powerful is the Curved Giant of Shields, vomiting out poisoned 

 flames." This is scarcely to be comprehended, unless it might imply 

 some enormous boiler or cauldron, in which the material was kept on 

 the walls, ready to be cast on the advancing fleets or armies. Undoubt- 

 edly, in process of use, different ingredients must have suggested them- 

 selves to the Greek fire-workers, and the composition may have grown 

 more complex in its later periods. Quintus Curtius gives a description 

 of fire, which was probably the origin of the Greek, and which seems to 

 have been no more than turpentine. The receipt given by the royal 

 historian, Anna Comnena, makes it of sulphur, naptha, and bitumen. 



It was at length so far made manageable as to be sent from place to 

 place in small vessels, and became so far purchasable by the belligerents 

 of the time, as to have been used alternately, for the defence of the 

 Greek and the Saracen. A French chronicle of 1190, gives a passage 

 stating, " that a Saracen ship sent by Sultan Saladin to the assistance of 

 his garrison, besieged in Acre, was taken at sea, and that on board were 

 found a great number of bottles containing the Greek fire." 



