Of the two plants known as hellebore to the ancients, only one was true hellebore. They were not related, but both were very poisonous. Black hellebore Helleborus niger is the true hellebore and sometimes used as a purgative. White hellebore or false hellebore (Veratrum album ) is the subject of this article. It is most famous for its role in its use in poisoning the water supply of the residents of Kirrah by their Greek besiegers. The besieged were so weak from the emetic effects of the plant, they were unable to withstand the assaults of the enemy upon their city.
A more recent historical theory has posited that Alexander the Great was poisoned by his own trusted cup-bearer with hellebore. Alexander was known to use white hellebore as an emetic and it would not have been difficult to overdose him or even place it in his wine as has been suggested.
The Gauls used it to poison their arrow tips for hunting and Odysseus of Homer’s Odyssey was also known to have tipped his arrows with white hellebore.
Whatever the poison, its use came with a certain lack of honor. It was looked on as a weapon of women and eunuchs, yet was certainly not eschewed to use by anyone desirous to rid themselves of anyone inconvenient. Even the grasping Ivan Vladislav in The Bone Goddess, as desperate as he was to have himself on the throne of Bulgaria, considered himself too noble to use poison on his cousin Gavril Radomir. Historically, the real Ivan killed Gavril while out hunting, as indeed he does in The Bone Goddess:
Basil laid aside the heavy tome and placing the tips of his fingers together, silently contemplated Ivan. “You will receive only a usurpers welcome, Ivan. Your people recognize you no longer. If you take the throne of Bulgaria, it must be with an iron hand and you do so under my authority. No Bulgarian will accept the rule of a Roman puppet.”
“Then hold me back no longer. Let me kill Gavril and take the throne!
Basil smiled thinly. “Then how will you kill him, son of Aron? Will you kill him while he sleeps? Will you turn his servants against him? Will you turn to the poisoners for aconite, henbane or hellebore?”
“I do not take a man’s life like thief in the night!” Ivan sneered. “When I kill him, he will look on my face and know who killed him!”
Poison was present on the mind of anyone who held any position that made them inconvenient and disposable. So much so, there were numerous recipes and solutions for antidotes, avoiding poison, and detecting it. Most famous was theriac. Mithradates VI of Pontus was the one to begin the legend of theriac. He experimented on his unfortunate prisoners with numerous poisons and antidotes. He claimed to have developed one that was effective against every kind of animal venom and plant toxin which he dubbed mithridatium. Mithridate contained opium, myrrh, saffron, ginger, cinnamon and castor, along with some forty other ingredients Eventually his notes fell into the hands of the Romans who conquered him and so spread. The physician Galen write a book called Theriaké . Galen’s recipe differed from Mithradates in that he added a distilled and powdered concoction made from viper’s flesh in addition to as many as fifty-five herbs including but not limited to long pepper, hedychium ( a flowering plant in the ginger family), poppy juice, cinnamon, opobalsam, (the resinous juice of balm of Gilead) myrrh, black and white pepper and turpentine resin, Lemnian earth ( a medicinal clay) roasted copper, castoreum (secretions from the anal glands of beavers), honey and vetch meal. While it seems highly unlikely that such a recipe would prove efficacious in counteracting any poison, it was highly regarded in its day. Leo VI expounded on the subject in the Byzantine military manual the Sylloge Tactiticorum as concerned military men:
For the soldiers to truly become immune to poisonous drugs, each must be given, on an empty stomach,. twenty leaves of rue, two nuts and two dried figs. If the above drugs prove to be completely inactive and ineffective, the following is applied: after the soldiers have put dry rue, peppercorn, a Lemnian clay stamped tablet, figs and nuts together in equal portions and after they have ground them down to the size of a walnut or a mouse each [must] consume this before or after the meal.
It is doubtful there were any effective antidotes at the time of the writing of the Tactiticorum. In any case, poison continued to be widely used and widely feared. Share your thoughts below? Do you think mithridatium was an effective antidote?
Sources: Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological & Chemical Warfare By Adrienne Mayor
In the Arms of Morpheus: The Tragic History of Morphine, Laudanum and Patent Medicines by Barbara Hodgson
A tenth-century Byzantine military manual:the Sylogge Tacticocrum tran. Georgeio Chatzelis amd Jonathan Harris
Antitheriaka: An Essay on Mithridatium and Theriaca by William Heberden