The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-22
GreeIE Fire.

The name of Greek fire has been given to
great number of inhammable compounds
more or less formidable and effective for de-
struction, and used extensively for warlike
purposes in former times. Father Amiot,
missionary in China, traces the employment
of f2tSees by the Chinese to the second CEN
tury A. d. and the Prussan officer Mayer
maintains that the Byzantinos had kno Wedge
of Greek fire in the year $50. The Byzan-
tine historians speak of the chief ingredient
of the Greek fire as "a light, tenacious, and
inflammable oil, which springs from the earth
and catches fire as soon as it comes in con-
tact with the air" Allowing for exaggera-
ton, or else for the Intervention of a match,
this applies perfectly to certain kinds of pc
iroleum which are exceedingly intlammable.
The ancient writer's mention petroleum
springs in the island of Zante, in the Greeian
Archipelago, along the Caspian coasts and
those of the Dead Sea. The Parsees have
always fed the sacred fire of their temple
with these oils drawn from.the soil, deposits
of which abound in Persia and India, the
purest in the world being in the Burmese
Empire, along the Irawaddy river, and con-
tiguous to Southern China. This highly
inflemmable fluid would readily pass from the
sphere of domestic uses into the arsenal of
weapons offensive and defensive. To impart
TO il the necessary consistence and adhesive
ness, it was mixed with-asphalt, tar, pitch,
and turpentine, substances all Of the same
character, but soldifed by oxidation and by
the evaporation of the light oils that hold
them in natural solution; other infammable
substances were added in the form of powder.
Much discrepancy is noted among his
torians with regard to the destructiveness of
Greek fire, and the difficulty of extinguish-
ing it. This is not to be ascribed to mere
exaggeration in some authors, or to repug-
nance of others to the marvellous. They
have really described different effects of diff
ferent compounds, more or less explosive and
more or less tenacious. In some parts of
China nitre crops out upon the surface soil;
the Chinese have for many centuries made
with it gunpowder and fireworks they have
also mixed it with naphtha and the other in
gradients of Greek fire, and thus obtained
source of oxygen, independent of the air, and
sustaining combustion under water or inside
of solid mass. 1t isknown that the ancients
combined sulphur with their other combus-
tibles, and they may have also used phospho-
rus, an ingredient of the modern Greek fire.
NJ. Fave, French ordnance officer, tells
us in the ''Dictionnaire de la Conversation"
that there has recently been found in the
Imperial Library at Paris, an Arabian manu-
script which discloses the whole art of these
incendiary compounds, aud of the instru-
ments for using them. But, unfortunately,
he gives us no details. From comparison
of many authorities, it appears that the pro-
jectile forces employed were not exclusively
mechanical, like that of the arbalet; they
were also chemical, such as resulted from the
expansive power of gases the explosive
quality of the lightest oils distilled from pc
troleum and aided by nitre, but they had not
the explosive power of our gunpowder, be-
cause the nitre employed was less purified.
The Chinese, who have always exceled us in
pyrotechnic displays, have never done much
rIcnh nf t,fth ha;r tn, Ga
mention of it in China as the ''oil of cruel
fire" said to have been carried there by the
Kitan Tartars, who had it from the King
of Ou.
Greek fire takes its name from the Greeks
af the Lower Empire who derived it from
Syria. Beckman attributes its invention to
Callinacus, an architect of Heliopolis, the
city of the sun, afterwards called Baalbec, in
G78, under the reign of the Emperor Con-
stantine Pogonatus. DESERVING from the
caliphs service he is reputed to have brought
with him the secret of many compositions of
this nature, and the mechanism for project
ing them.
Lebeau, in his "Histoire du Bas Empire, "
describes the extravaganza of terror with
which it affected the ignorant, when he writes
that neither stones nor even iron resisted its
activity, or rather he confounds, with the
special effects of these combustibles, those
WHICH dI6 COuIuOliy WltH0SSeu Ill dll S8J6u-
sive confagrations where iron is melted and
stones crumbed. He mentions, further,
that it burned in water, that it traversed the
air with the Bplendor of lightning and the
noise of thunder, and set fire, with horrible
explosion, to buildings, vessels, etc. What
more could be affirmed of our incendiary
bombshells projected by gunpowder?
In two sieges, writes Gibbon, the delive-
rance of Constantinople may be chiefly
ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the
real efficacy of the Greek fire. 1t was poured
from large boilers sn the ramparts, orlaunched
in red-hot balls of stone or iron, or darted
with arrows and javelins, twisted round with
flax and tow which had imbibed the infam-
mable oil. In naval battles, fre-ships filled
with these combustibles we're carried by the
wind, that famed their flames against the
sides of the enemys vessels. 1t was usually
blown through long copper tubes, planted in
the prov of O galley, and fancifully shaped
into the mouths of savage monsters that
seemed to vomit a stream of liquid fire. The
art of compounding it was preserved at Con
staRtinople as the palladium of the State. Its
galleys and artillery might occasionally be
lent to the allies of Rome; but the secret o.
the Greek fire was concealed with the mos
Jealous scruple for above four hundred years
The Princess Anna Comnena, in mentioning
resin, sulphur, and oil, as its components
only intended, it Is probable, to battle curl
osity by telling just so much as everybod.
knew already.
In 1898, the feet of Alexis Comnenus use,
Greek fire against the Pisans. His ships hat