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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
(Constantine) suggests the answers that might best elude the indiscreet 
curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They should be told 
that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by an angel to the first 
and greatest of the Constantines, with the sacred injunction that this gift of 
Heaven, this peculiar blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated 
to any foreign nation ; that the prince and subject were alike bound to 
religious silence under the temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and 
sacrilege ; and that the infamous attempt would provoke the sudden and 
supernatural vengeance of the God of the Christians. By these precautions 
the secret was confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East ; 
and at the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and 
every art were familiar, suffered the effects without understanding the com- 
position of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or stolen by 
the Mahometans ; and in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt they retorted an 
invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A 
knight, who despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates with 
heartfelt sincerity his own fears and those of his companions at the sight 
and sound of this mischievous engine that discharged a torrent of the Greek 
fire, the “ feu Gregeois,” as it is styled by the more early of the French 
writers. It came flying through the air, says Joinville (History of St. Louis), 
like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of an hogshead, with 
the report of thunder and the velocity of lightning ; and the darkness of the 
night was dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or, 
as it may be called, the Saracen fire was continued to the middle of the four- 
teenth century, when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and 
charcoal effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of 
mankind. 
From certain allusions as to the manner in which the Greek 
fire was used — viz., that it was cast from catapults and slings 
— I was inclined at one time to believe that a solid ball was 
cast from the engine, and that it ignited in its course through 
the air. On further inquiry I feel that this hypothesis is un- 
tenable, the arguments of Beckman appearing to be conclu- 
sive that the substance employed was liquid, and was even 
sometimes thrown from engines constructed after the manner 
of our modern fire-engines. He remarks that, in the East, 
engines were employed not only to extinguish but to produce 
fires : — - 
The Greek fife invented by Callinicus, an architect of Heliopolis, a city 
afterwards named Balbec, in the year 678, the use of which was continued in 
the East till 1291, and which was certainly liquid, was employed in many 
different ways, but chiefly on board ship ; being thrown by large fire- 
engines on the ships of the enemy. Sometimes this fire was kindled in 
particular vessels, which might be called fire-ships, and which were introduced 
amongst a hostile fleet ; sometimes it was put into jars and other vessels, 
which were thrown at the enemy by means of projectile machines ; and 
sometimes it was squirted by the soldiers from hand engines, or, as it appears, 
was blown through pipes. But the machines with which this fire was dis- 
