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The Greek Fire
The secret naval weapon of the Byzantine Empire
The use of fire for military purposes is as old as the art of war. Homer, the father of history, recalls in Iliadacum the inhabitants of Troy destroyed the battleships of those in Ahaia with fire: “… and the people of Troy threw unrelenting fire behind them and the flame spilled over them, crushing them …”. if there are any questions about this war, archaeological data show that inflammatory mixtures were used since the time of the Assyrian conquerors, in the 9th century BC; these mixtures were placed on arrows.
The ancient Greco-Roman world was familiar with these tactics and widely used various chemical compounds based on sulfur, oil or bitumen. Moreover: the ancient historian Thucydides mentions that in the siege of Delium, in 424 BC, flame throwers were used.
Even before the terrible Greek (Byzantine) fire was discovered, Emperor Athanasius I (491–518) used a chemical compound based on sulfur and lime in the naval battle that took place in 515 against Vitalian’s rebellions. It seems that the one who advised the emperor to use the mixture for that matter was an Athenian philosopher named Proclus.
The Alexandria School of chemistry
The first written references to liquid fire — as it was called the Greek /…
