It didn’t happen any too soon. Bardas Phokas, the chief of the rebels and a one time trusted general of Basils’ was closing in on the imperial city. Or rather, one of his next in command, Kalyokyros Delphinas, who took charge of storming Chrysopolis, a city across the Golden Horn from Constantinople. It took a quite a long time for negotiations to take place, but once they did, either in late 988 or early 999, numerous long ships could be seen on the horizon and with them six thousand Norsemen. They soundly defeated Delphinas’ men. Delphinas himself went on to meet a nasty death of impalement. The Varangians then went on to Abydos where they were again victorious, albeit helped out some by Bardas Phokas inexplicably keeling over on the battlefield. Stroke? Heart attack? Poison? We can’t be sure.
Of these six thousand men, Basil selected the best to be his personal guard. They were fierce fighters. Wherever Basil went, they went. Basil continued his campaign in Bulgaria, fighting on for around twenty more years before seeing victory. No doubt the Varangian Guard were there at the infamous Kleidion where who knows how many Bulgarians were blinded and sent home. In Syria, they are remembered for stripping the lead and copper from the Monastery of Constantine and setting fire to it.
They had the distinct honor of being able to go to the imperial vaults and being allowed to take away whatever they could carry when an emperor died. Their oath was to the emperor alone and not to the empire. They were also the best paid of the military. In fact, it was so hard to get into the Guard, yuu had to not only prove yourself, but pay the equivalent of three pounds of gold as an entry fee. Many guardsmen went home to Scandinavia, wealthy men. After England came under the control of William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066, many disgruntled and disenfranchised Englishmen left to become guardsman.
The result of the marriage of Anna to Vladimir? Eventually Russia. Her grand onion domes, Cyrillic alphabet, eastern orthodox religion and many customs, were all distinctively Byzantine. But her name Russia, is because of the Rus, the Norse traders who came down to what is now the Ukraine to do business.
Later, Harold Hadrada would make the Varangian Guard famous with his innovative battle tactics, before returning to Norway to be king. He died at Stamford Bridge in 1066, in a failed bid for the throne of Northumbria. before the Saxon king, also named Harold, marched down to Hastings to meet his own defeat at Hastings at he hands of the William, the bastard Duke of Normandy.
The Varangian Guard survived in some form or other until the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. By this time they no longer had the same awe-inspiring reputation, nor were they a Scandinavian unit. However, the memory of them is still renowned, as one of the most fearsome foreign units in history.
Author: Gretchen Brown
The Varangian Guard Part One
In The Serpentine Key, Sven Thorvaldson serves as emissary to Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, from Basil II, Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, bringing in the Norsemen who would eventually become the Varangian Guard.
Varangian was a term used by the Byzantines to denote anyone from the area we now call the Ukraine, as well as Scandinavia.
In 986 Basil II was in a difficult situation. His nobles were rebelling against him, he had a shortage of military, he had just been catastrophically ambushed at Trajan’s Gate by the Bulgarians and he no one he could really trust. It was not for nothing that the Byzantines were known for political intrigue. In fact the name came to mean political intrigue in later centuries.
Basil had a sister who was yet unmarried and in 988 he came to a decision that was to change the course of history. He sent a proposition to Vladimir, prince of Kiev who was then making himself all too well at home in one of Basil’s Cities, Cherson in the Crimea. If Vladimir would convert to Christianity and send six thousand of his finest warriors, Vladimir could then have the coveted hand of his sister, the Porphyrogenita in marriage.
Ann’s title, the Porphyrogenita, meant literally “Purple Born: she had been born in the chambers made of porphyry, a kind of purple stone and that meant her place in the imperial family as was her brother’s a high status one. One simply did not go marrying one’s imperial sister off to a pagan barbarian war lord who already had eight wives and numerous concubines. There was an uproar in the city. It was the scandal of the century.
What was in this for Vladimir besides the hand of the most eligible bachelorette in all Christendom?
By marrying Anna, Vladimir could ally himself with a very powerful neighbor, one with whom the Rus had long been at odds with. Furthermore, Vladimir had already been religion shopping. He had rejected Judaism and Islam and western Christianity, but the the reports of the high-domed Hagia Sophia– now that he liked. Eastern Orthodox Christianity it would be for him. The six thousand warriors, Vladimir had amassed to take down his brother Yaropolk were getting a tad bit restless. Many of these were mercenaries who had been sent by Vladimir’s kinsman, the king of Norway, to aid Vladimir during his tempestuous little civil war with his brother for control of the land left by their father Sviatoslav. It was said that they told Vladimir when he had no money to pay them as promised, “Show us then, the way to the King of the Greeks!” For before this time, it was not unheard of for Scandinavians to be mercenaries in Byzantine forces, for which the Byzantines paid very well.
So in this way, Vladimir got out of a potentially sticky situation, got the girl (though he had to send away all the extra ladies, of course) and got a new religion with which to bind his divided kingdom of Norse and Slavs together. Basil married off his sister and got some of the most feared fighting forces in the world at the time. One cannot but wonder if some of them were not the legendary Jomsvikings, but that is a subject for another time.
Sorcery and Magic Part Four
Magic in the Christian context I n Constantinople is slightly harder to define, though not by much. If you think of magic as a belief system whereupon the order of things can be influenced by human will alone, there is much in Christianity and especially Byzantine Orthodox Christianity with its icons and incense that fits the bill nicely. The use of icons began to be seen as a form of idolatry and in the eight century, iconoclasm saw the destruction of many of these images of art. A second iconoclasm occurred in the ninth century. The people loved their icons however and iconography was eventually restored. Items such as amulets were popular to protect a mother during pregnancy for example, or worn to ward off the “evil-eye”, though they were frowned upon by the Church hierarchy. It was suspected that the Empress Zoe was indulging in some sort of pagan ritual in her chambers, while pretending to distill sweet oils for perfumes and cosmetics.
As with any culture, when a religion such as Christianity is introduced, it begins with the aristocracy and only slowly filters down to the lower strata of society as folk wisdom and folk magic continue to be practiced long after a nation has been “converted”. This was evident in Anglo-Saxon England as witnessed by the endurance of the old gods in things such as place names, the days of the week and even our own planet. It certainly was evident in Kiev, for though Vladimir converted to Orthodox Christianity, and outlawed the old Slavonic and Norse gods in an attempt to unify his people through religion, he failed to eradicate the old ways completely and in fact they continued to remain vibrant for the Russian people as late as the fifteenth century.
Henry Maguire writes in Byzantine Magic:
Practices like exorcism, blessing, or even the major sacraments could be viewed and used on the popular level in precisely the same ways as the magical operations designed to manipulate the material conditions of human life while prayers and rituals dedicated to saints who would be used in specific circumstances could be thought to create similarly efficacious alterations in human relations t those of the magical practices described above.
Emperor Manuel I Comnenus utilized astrology for his own purposes in the twelfth century. The Byzantine historian Anna Comnene, daughter of the Emperor Alexios, commented at length in her Alexiad on the use of astrologers and prophesies. Now these (astrologers) observe the hour of the birth of the persons about whom they intend to prophesy, and fix the cardinal points and carefully note the disposition of all the stars, in short they do everything that the inventor of this science bequeathed to posterity and which those who trouble about such trifles understand. We, also, at one time dabbled a little in this science, not in order to cast horoscopes (God forbid!), but by gaining a more accurate idea of this vain study to be able to pass judgment upon its devotees. She takes care to distance herself, not wishing to impinge on her reputation or imply that she (God forbid!) recommends that anyone ought to visit an astrologer for personal reasons.
Resources: Byzantine Magic by Henry Maguire
Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen Through Contemporary Eyes By Deno John Geanakoplos
History of the Byzantine Empire from DCCXVI to MLVII By George Finlay
Sorcery and Magic Part Three
Seiðr was associated with spinning and weaving as were the Norns themselves. This may have also been one of the reasons why it was considered unmanly for Norse men to practice, as fiber arts were the domain of women. As Thorsteinn noted when he happened upon Málfríðr, Sigga and Olga in the marsh near Kiev:
He observed the three, a little girl, a young woman and an old crone, and the spinning and the wool in various stages of work and his face creased into a half-frozen smile. “I do believe I have wandered down to the very roots of the Great Tree and found the three Norns at work, spinning the fates of the world.”
Freydis explains the concept to Theophana in The Serpentine Key:
Theophana frowned. “I do not understand these words that you use. Orlog and Urðr .” The witch placed her hand on the door. She stroked the sleek surface, letting her fingers linger as if on a lover, before she answered.
“Orlog and Urðr are fate of mortals and immortals alike. But they are not the same. Orlog is immovable. Urðr, you move and shape through your own actions, like a fly’s struggle on a web. You may influence your own path which is Urðr , but you may not change Orlog, which is primal, unchanging, never ceasing.”
Urðabrunnr (Urðr’s Well) is located at the root of the World Tree, Yggdrasil and Urðr, being one of the Norns, controls the destinies of all mankind. The Norns are three in number and in addition to Urðr (That Which Is) are her two sisters, Verðandi (That Which Is Becoming ) and Skuld (That Which Should Become) There was no concept of the future in Norse eschatology. The future is ever changeable, depending upon what Urðr deals you. The only thing you may not change is Ørlög or primeval law. It is Urðr or (Wyrd in the Anglo-Saxon) that the seiðkona seeks to influence. Ørlög and Urðr can be likened to weaving. Any Norse woman in charge of a farmstead or indeed any common farmwife with the borders of the Byzantine Empire would understand that you have warp threads, which remain unchangeable and that weft threads or Urðr are what we can change in our lives and what give the weaving its pattern and color. The Norns were thought to influence the destiny of a child at birth and this concept can be seen in such well-known stories as the story of Sleeping Beauty and the fairies who are invited to weave a positive destiny for the child. Here too, the fiber arts make their appearance in the form of a spindle, which certainly takes us back to the Indo-European concept of our destinies as a thread. The Valkyries too are depicted as “weird-sisters” in Njall’s Saga, weaving the fates of men, though they thread and weight their looms with gore:
“See! warp is stretched
For warriors’ fall,
Lo! weft in loom…
“This woof is woven
With entrails of men,
This warp is hardweighted
With heads of the slain,
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom ironbound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our warwinning woof.
Sorcery and Magic Part Two
The Saga of Erik the Red is probably the most comprehensive information today about Norse seeresses.
There was in the settlement the woman whose name was Thorbjorg. She was a prophetess (spae-queen), and was called Litilvolva (little sybil). She had had nine sisters, and they were all spae-queens, and she was the only one now living.
It was written in a time when Christianity had come to Iceland and the old gods were becoming only a memory. Thorbjorg is obviously a very well respected woman. Like many of her ilk, she travels from farmstead to farmstead and is very lavishly received. We are told in great detail what she wears and this is obviously very important as one of the items is a cat-skin cloak. The cat was the sacred animal of Freyja, the originator of seiðr. We are not told what the talismans were, but perhaps they were rune staves.
Now, when she came in the evening, accompanied by the man who had been sent to meet her, she was dressed in such wise that she had a blue mantle over her, with strings for the neck, and it was inlaid with gems quite down to the skirt. On her neck she had glass beads. On her head she had a black hood of lambskin, lined with ermine. A staff she had in her hand, with a knob thereon; it was ornamented with brass, and inlaid with gems round about the knob. Around her she wore a girdle of soft hair, and therein was a large skin-bag, in which she kept the talismans needful to her in her wisdom. She wore hairy calf-skin shoes on her feet, with long and strong-looking thongs to them, and great knobs of latten at the ends. On her hands she had gloves of ermine-skin, and they were white and hairy within.
In Erik the Red’s Saga the writer describes in detail the lavish preparation for the arrival of the spae-queen, Thorbjorg:
It was a custom of Thorbjorg, in the winter time, to make a circuit, and people invited her to their houses, especially those who had any curiosity about the season, or desired to know their fate… He invited, therefore, the spae-queen to his house, and prepared for her a hearty welcome, as was the custom wherever a reception was accorded a woman of this kind. A high seat was prepared for her, and a cushion laid thereon in which were poultry-feathers.
During the evening the tables were set; and now I must tell you what food was made ready for the spae-queen. There was prepared for her porridge of kid’s milk, and hearts of all kinds of living creatures there found were cooked for her. She had a brazen spoon, and a knife with a handle of walrus-tusk, which was mounted with two rings of brass, and the point of it was broken off.
One thing that was very important were the women who were able to chant the “wyrd” songs or fate songs. “Wyrd” was an archaic term referring to fate. We see it in Shakespeare’s “weird sisters”, in his tragic play, Macbeth, the three witches take on the persona of the three Norns of Norse myth. Wyrd became corrupted as “weird” in modern English, to mean something strange and unknown, which when you think about it, is fitting as our fates are pretty strange and unknown to us.
And when the (next) day was far spent, the preparations were made for her which she required for the exercise of her enchantments. She begged them to bring to her those women who were acquainted with the lore needed for the exercise of the enchantments, and which is known by the name of Weird-songs, but no such women came forward. Then was search made throughout the homestead if any woman were so learned.
We see that in Erik the Red’s Saga, that the old ways and the old songs are already becoming lost as Christianity takes hold in Iceland. Gudrid may well be the last generation to know how to chant the spells necessary for spae-magic to take place.
Then answered Gudrid, “I am not skilled in deep learning, nor am I a wise-woman, although Halldis, my foster-mother, taught me, in Iceland, the lore which she called Weird-songs.”
“Then art thou wise in good season,” answered Thorbjorg; but Gudrid replied, “That lore and the ceremony are of such a kind, that I purpose to be of no assistance therein, because I am a Christian woman.”
Then answered Thorbjorg, “Thou mightest perchance afford thy help to the men in this company, and yet be none the worse woman than thou wast before…”
Thorkell thereupon urged Gudrid to consent, and she yielded to his wishes. The women formed a ring round about, and Thorbjorg ascended the scaffold and the seat prepared for her enchantments. Then sang Gudrid the weird-song in so beautiful and excellent a manner, that to no one there did it seem that he had ever before heard the song in voice so beautiful as now.
In The Serpentine Key, Freydis is a seiðkona. Seiðkona means literally “woman of seething”. Freydis walks the nine worlds, speaking to the spirits and sometimes bringing back messages from the gods. In my writing, I leave the experience up to the interpretation of the reader. Did she have a real transcendental experience? Did she become high from the henbane and hempr (old Germanic word for cannabis) seeds thrown on the fire?
She settled the distaff between her thighs as if to begin spinning. But instead of wool, the end of the staff instead carried upon it a carved, whorled head. Instead of spinning, Freydis settled herself on the high platform, the catskin cloak warm over her shoulders. The ends of her fingers tingled and something deep in the pit of her stomach stirred, like a restless animal just beginning to awaken. The beat of the drum thrummed within her. The animal inside was coiled now. Watchful. Waiting. She was ready.
In The Bone Goddess, Freydis’ granddaughter Sigga learns seiðr under the tutelage of the same volva as Freydis did. Málfríðr is by this time, very old. The real Málfríðr was the mother of Vladimir Prince of Kiev and the Russian Primary Chronicle records that she lived to be over a hundred years old and even after the introduction of Christianity, was brought out from her cave (where she was presumably exiled) and called upon to prophesy. Was old Málfríðr (Malusha in the Slavic) actually a seiðkona? We may never know. The Russian Primary Chronicle tells us that she was a bondwoman and it seems unlikely that as powerful and important a woman as a seiðkona would be in bondage.
Seeresses were sometimes viewed with something more like fear. It is important to remember that there was sometimes a differentiation between seiðr and Spa. The spakona was more often likely to do good with her magic; the seiðr seeress was sometimes looked on with suspicion, perhaps because her practice involved sexual elements, though this attitude may have come about more recently with the advent of Christianity. Sometimes they were looked upon as evil, faring forth in the form of a fylgia, most often an animal or bird, intent on doing harm. The Voluspa from the Poetic Edda tells of one such sorceress:
Heid, they named her, who sought their home
The wide-seeing witch, in magic wise;
Minds she bewitched that were moved by magic
To evil women, a joy she was.
Since anything we have about seiðr today is written from a Christian perspective, after the arrival of the religion to Scandinavia, we may never know.
Resources:
Seidr: The Door is Open: Working with Trance Prophesy, the High Seat and Norse Magic by Katie Gerard
Nine Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism by Jenny Blain
Seed of Yggdrasil by Maria Kvilhaug See also the author’s excellent web site: http://freya.theladyofthelabyrinth.com/
Sorcery and Magic Part One
The Sagas and Eddas speak at length on magic and no one is so central to that role as the seiðkona or volva. Seidr is a shamanistic approach to magic that differs from galdr, which involved singing or chanting the runes. Despite that numerous references to these practitioners of magic, we know little of what actually went on and can only guess at some aspects.
In the Ynglinga Saga, Freyja is the one who brings the magic art to the Aesir:
Njord’s daughter Freya was priestess of the sacrifices,
and first taught the Asaland people the magic art,
as it was in use and fashion among the Vanaland people.
Odin learns magic from Freyja, though in the Lokasenna, Loki accuses him of learning it from the Sami people thus:
“They say that with spells in Samsey once
Like witches with charms didst thou work;
And in witch’s guise among men didst thou go;
Unmanly thy soul must seem.”
For a man to practice seiðr was considered especially shameful and unmanly. He was thenceforth known as ergi. It is likely though, given the shamanistic way seiðr was practiced, that is was brought learned from the Sami people.
Some hints as to the nature of the magic they used might come from accounts of later medieval witches who were supposed to have rubbed a strange ointment of herbs upon their broomsticks upon which they rode naked. Francis Bacon listed the ingredients of the witches ointment as “the fat of children digged out of their graves, of juices of smallage, wolfe-bane and cinque foil, mingled with the meal of fine wheat.” Other recipes listed nightshade and henbane among other poisonous plants with toxic alkaloids. Not surprisingly, nightshade is notorious for producing a sensation of flight. Henbane also produces a hallucinogenic reaction.
When archaeologists unearthed a rich grave of a woman at Fyrkat, Denmark from the tenth century, they found among many other grave goods, a pouch containing the seeds of henbane and cannabis both with mind-altering properties. Even henbane petals rubbed against the skin have been reported to have caused an experience akin to floating or flying. How much more so when combined with nightshade and mandrake, plants with high levels of toxic alkaloids such as scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine. Such plants were placed in a fatty substance by medieval witches and applied to a distaff or broomstick and ridden upon. These herbs can take very quick effect on the skin and more so against the mucous membranes of a woman’s vagina. This would explain the sexual element darkly hinted at by later Christian writers, but never properly alluded to. In any case, asmale practitioners of seiðr were looked on with scorn by their contemporaries, it is possible that seiðr required one to be sexually passive, or perhaps there were actions associated with the anointed distaff that disagreed strongly with medieval Scandinavian sensibilities of gender roles, including that of fiber arts as we shall explore in part three of this study.
Any thoughts on this subject? I would love to hear from you. Comment below.
Lost to the West by Lars Brownsworth – a review by Gretchen Brown
Lars Brownsworth brings us the Byzantine Empire in all her pomp and glitter, political intrigue, poison, assassination and seduction. Most people who consider themselves somewhat knowledgeable about history and even the Roman Empire, fall short when it comes to knowledge of the eastern half that endured for another eleven centuries after Rome fell to the barbarians in her midst. As Roman troops withdraw from Britain to cover their losses back at home and Christianity begins to sweep the Empire, a new leader emerges to change the face of Rome forever. Any history of Byzantium rightly begins with Constantine and it is on his shoulders that Brownsworth leaves the beginning.
We often define the Byzantine Empire beginning where the Western Roman Empire left off. As Brownsworth aptly illustrates there was no abrupt handover. Rome did not even “fall” in the strictest sense. Yes, the Goths and Visigoths took down her great city, but Rome in the West had been declining gradually for some time, while in the East, the Empire had been experiencing something the West would not see for many more centuries – a Renaissance. Constantine places the new capital between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and in a stroke of typical egotism, names it after himself.
Brownsworth covers the next several centuries in a whirl of emperors, Hunnic invasions and Christian heresies. He does so through a series of vignettes, graphic tales and titillating tidbits. He covers Justinian, the Muslim threat from the east, the institution of the Varangian Guard and the Bulgarian wars under the reign of Basil II and the golden age of Byzantium. He spends much more time in the earlier centuries and fewer pages on the golden age of the empire, Constantinople’s tragic role in the Crusades and the downfall of the Byzantine Empire.
For readers of Alan W. Eckart’s works on American frontier history, Brownsworth’s approach is similar, condensing otherwise dry academia into a readable work for the average armchair historian. The strength of this book is that the author has a genuine passion for the history of the Eastern Roman Empire and it shows in his enthusiasm for his subject in these pages while showing a real flair for the dramatic. The major drawback is that he may have sacrificed some academic accuracy for dramatic flair.
The main weakness to this book is that it is attempting to deal a broad stroke at a very broad subject within three hundred or so pages. Brownsworth faces a monumental task in condensing over a thousand years of Byzantine history in a few hundred pages. The Byzantine Empire is a subject that is too expansive a scope to handle in one book. Yet he does a good job of catching the highlights and making them readable. While certainly not for the serious academic, who will need a more in depth approach with more primary sources cited, it is an excellent and entertaining introduction written for the casual reader. Have you read this book? What did you think? Let me know your thoughts below.
You can get the book here:
Greek Fire Legendary Incendiary Part Two
There has been some debate on what Greek Fire actually was. Most historians agree that it made use of petroleum and others throw around combinations of pine resin, quicklime, calcium phosphide, sulfur, or niter. So then let us briefly examine some of these components to the best of my ability, bearing in mind that chemistry has never one of my strong subjects!
Pine Resin This seems like a likely enough candidate. It is certainly a substance prone to inflame, particularly the sticky resin used to make turpentine and obtained from the low growing terebinth tree of the Mediterranean. Pine resin likely also thickened the mixture, helping it to cling to armor, skin and the sides of wooden sea going vessels.
Naphtha would have been the petroleum component in the mixture. Also flammable, it forms part of the word for Napalm, probably one of the world’s best known incendiaries. The word is derived from Persian and comes to us in the Latin and Greek. However then it would have simply been a term for crude oil and was probably what was referred to when used in Greek fire.
Quicklime From what I have studied, the use of quick lime, or calcium oxide, in actual application for the liquid is highly probable, though there are those who would disagree with me. When calcium oxide makes contact with water, it increases its temperature above 150°C. In addition, the fumes from burning this substance are irritants to the skin and mucous membranes. Not a nice thing to be hit with when the wind isn’t favoring you. It certainly speaks on Greek’s Fire’s notorious reputation for the flames increasing in intensity when water was poured on it.
Calcium Phosphide This, like quicklime is known to react with water. Historically, it was made by boiling bones with charcoal and lime in a closed container, possibly made of clay. When put in contact with water calcium phosphide releases phosphine, which is actually explosive. Calcium phosphide is used in modern times in incendiary weapons and in fireworks and torpedoes. It has also been used as a rodenticide, reacting with the acids in the animals’ digestive systems.
Niter is the mineral form of potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter and commonly an ingredient of gunpowder. During the American Revolution, back country caves in Kentucky were a common source for saltpeter needed for gunpowder. Niter as well as sulfur have both been disputed as actually having any actual bearing in the formula. For one thing, saltpeter was not supposed to have been known in the West before 1125.
Sulfur would have been well known all the way back to ancient times and was known then as brimstone. There is no doubt it was used by itself or with bitumen hurled in clay pots as an incendiary weapon. As a component for Greek fire, however, many experts seem to be unconvinced.
So do we know what Greek Fire was really composed of? Have all attempts to reconstruct this substance failed? Perhaps not. Watch this documentary showing how Greek Fire may have been sprayed using a sort of ancient flame thrower.
For more information, see also:
A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder
By J. R. Partington
Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological & Chemical Warfare …
By Adrienne Mayor
Greek Fire – Legendary Incendiary Part One
In The Serpentine Key, the secret to Greek Fire is stolen through the subterfuge of a member of the imperial family itself and used as a bargaining chip in the intrigues surrounding the rebellion against Basil II in the 980s.
Greek Fire was an incendiary weapon, most famously used by the Byzantine Empire from at least the seventh century C.E., eventually being lost to obscurity, some say by the end of the thirteenth century. Greek Fire is most famous for being able to burn on water and reputedly not being able to be extinguished with water. Some even said that water fueled its flames. The only things that could extinguish it were supposedly vinegar and stale urine, both of which were used to infuse cow hides which were then placed over fortress walls and ships to protect them from igniting. This was useful knowledge for those against whom Greek fire was used, including the Rus, Bulgarians, Turks and others. In 814, the Bulgarians captured several barrels of the stuff and 36 siphons, but because of the complex nature of operating the devices, they went unused. In 941, the liquid was used against the Rus with deadly efficacy. Liudprand of Cremona remembered this event when he wrote: “The Rus, seeing the flames, jumped overboard, preferring water to fire. Some sank, weighed down by the weight of their breastplates and helmets; others caught fire.” Those who escaped were captured and executed. The Rus never again attempted to besiege Constantinople, preferring in later years to guard the city in the capacity of the Varangian Guard.
It is telling that this weapon was not called Greek Fire in its own time. Indeed, the Byzantines who thought of themselves as nothing by Roman, would have been insulted by the appellation of Greek, even though it was the language most in the Empire spoke. Instead it was called Roman fire, Kallinikos fire, sea fire, liquid fire and even wild fire, and it is this latter name that George R.R. Martin in his Song of Ice and Fire series chose for the green fire used by the characters in his fantasy.
Greek fire is credited to a Syrian known as Kallinikos or Callinicus. Supposedly, his descendants, a family by the name of Lampros, were responsible for guarding the secret. This story in itself is controversial. The name Lampros means “Brilliant” Was this a cover for the people who were in charge of keeping it secret? It has been said the the secret was never written down, but was given into the care of three alchemists who each knew a portion of the formula, but not all of it, so that it could not be stolen. Were these alchemists of the Lampros family? Or were they members of a family at all, but actually more of a secret organization charged with the security of the Byzantine Empire?
Incendiary weapons were hardly new to the scene when Kallinikos came along. They are depicted as being used by the Assyrians and are mentioned numerous times in historical records. So what made Greek Fire so special? There were a lot of people who wanted to get their hands on it and the Byzantines would do a lot to keep it out of the hands of their enemies. It was said that on his deathbed, Romanos II, charged his son (Basil II’s father) to never deliver the secret to the enemies of the empire, declaring the weapon to be a gift from the angels and “not to prepare this fire but for Christians, and only in the imperial city”. In addition to the alchemists who compounded the secret formula, there was also the task of constructing the siphons through which the liquid was propelled at other ships. Furthermore, the men who operated the siphons needed to be trained to effectively operate them. The siphons would likely have been a device in which the liquid was heated in a sort of covered cauldron, whereupon it would have been forced through a siphon that was pumped, giving it the necessary pressure to effectively spray the heated liquid over a good distance with deadly effect. Those operating this system would likely have needed some sort of protective covering, perhaps leather garments soaked in vinegar or stale urine.
Poison Apothecary Part Six
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