Adrienne Mayor 'Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs. Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World'
Those looking for an illustration of the old maxim that the preoccupations of the present can colour the interpretation of the past could do a lot worse than examine this book. With a mixture of cod science and tabloid journalism Miss Mayor trawls through ancient history and mythology looking for 'weapons of mass destruction' and she finds plenty; or does she? In any factual book the reader must continually ask if the author is really a reliable guide. In my opinion Miss Mayor is not. Take her interpretation of the myth of Medea. Jason, Medea's husband has left her and plans to marry the Corinthian princess Glauke. In revenge Medea prepares a wedding gift for the unfortunate girl, a poison robe, which when Glauke puts it on bursts into flame and sticks to her skin so that she is unable to remove it. Both she and her father who attempts to help her are consumed. The parallel between the poison robe and modern napalm is indeed striking, but does it show that 'the myth of Medea was based on arcane knowledge of the destructive burning nature of petroleum', and did it 'symbolize for the ancients the horrors of nefarious toxic weapons'? Surely Miss Mayor has totally missed the point; the myth of Medea is not a text on incendiary weapons, but a psychological study of a wronged woman driven over the edge. The ancients did not need to know about petroleum, in a time of clothes made from flammable natural fabrics and when naked flames were used for illumination tragic accidents must have been all too common. The point is not how Glauke died but that Medea is capable of cold bloodedly inflicting such a fate.
In this book Miss Mayor employs a kind of von Daniken like logic to find chemical and biological weapons everywhere. Her arguments are weak and her knowledge of chemistry shocking. Throughout the book there is a liberal scattering of scientific terms, frequently used incorrectly; and a large number of bio-this and bio-that, bio-hazard, bio-toxin, bio-weapon, bio-bullshit…
I am sure that the ancients really did make use of chemical and biological weapons; however, this book is not a good place to read about those attempts.
Overlook Duckworth, 319 pages