Fire in Ancient Warfare (Greece Essay

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104).

In Ancient Israel, the use of fire is also part of the tradition of warfare. For example, we are not sure whether the prophet Elijah is stating that the fire hurled against the Moabites is divine, or simply falls down upon the enemy from Israelite war machines: "If I am a man of God," Elijah replied, "may fired come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men!" Then the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed him and his fifty men (2 Kings 1:12, New International Version).

Similarly, since most ancient gates were nothing but fortified wood, when the armies of Israel set out to use siege warfare, the rules for such are outlined in Deuteronomy 20: 10-20; however, use of flaming arrows, lit pots of oil shot from frames arranged on the outsides of walls -- more like a slingshot than a catapult, in fact, although "Abimelech went to the tower and stormed it. But as he approached the entrance to the tower, he set it on fire, (Judges 9:52)" most new scholarship states that "the Jews never used machines to attack or defend towns before the Maccabean wars, and then they were copying the Greeks against whom they were fighting" (de Vaux, 1997, p.237).

The ancient Israelites were not a particularly aggressive or imperialistic people, and while war was part of their culture, it was typically more internalized.

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In addition, their development of technology was quite different than Greece and Rome. For the Greek, scientific discovery, including the use of fire in warfare, was encouraged and lauded, and these early versions of mixing chemicals to provide a way to use fire in an aggressive manner would finally peak one Rome's power migrated to Byzantium, and the true wrath of the ancient world would be unleashed.

REFERENCES

Bradford, a. (2000). With Arrow, Sword, and Spear: A History of Warfare in the Ancient World. Praeger.

Crosby, a. (2002). Throwing Fire: Projectile Technology Through History. Cambridge De Vaux, R. (1997). Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions. Erdmans.

Partington, J. (1998). A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder. Johns Hopkins University

Press.

Thucydides. (2007). The History of the Peloponnesian War. Baker Press.

Wicken, J. (2001). "Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World: Part 1." Fight Times,

Cited in: http://www.fighttimes.com/magazine/magazine.asp?article=676

Woods, M. (2000). Ancient Warfare: From Clubs to Catapults. Runestone.

Commentators on the Ancient World include several substances in their definition of Greek Fire: Liquid petroleum or Naphtha; liquid pitch; mixtures of pitch, resin, and sulphur; mixtures of quicklime and sulphur; quicklime, sulfer and other materials (bitumen, resin, naphta, etc.; and then, in the 9th century, the Byzantine version, composed of serveral secret ingredients (Partingont, 1998, p. 28).

It is likely that this "flamethrower" at Delium consisted of a large bellows that blew down.....

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