Greek-fire

Greek-fire, a composition supposed to have been of pounded resin or bitumen, sulphur, naphtha (the principal ingredient), and probably nitre, with which, from about 673 A.D. onwards, the Greeks of the Byzantine empire were wont to defend themselves against their Saracen adversaries. The accounts of its effects are so mingled with obvious fable that it is difficult to arrive at any just conclusion as to its power; but the mixture appears to have been highly inflammable, and to have been difficult to extinguish; though the actual destruction caused by it was hardly proportionate to the terror it created. It was poured out, burning, from ladles on besiegers, projected out of tubes to a distance, or shot from balistæ, burning on tow tied to arrows. The invention of this material has usually been ascribed to Callinicus of Heliopolis, and to the year 668 A.D. At Constantinople the process of making Greek-fire was kept a profound secret for several centuries. The knowledge, however, of its composition gradually spread; and the use of it spread to the West. Subsisting for some time concurrently with gunpowder, it gradually died out before the advances of that still more effective competitor. Combustibles with a similar aim were used at the siege of Charleston in 1863, composed of sulphur, nitre, and lampblack; and naphtha in shells was also tried. The petroleum bombs of the Paris Commune of 1871 corresponded more nearly to Greek-fire than does gunpowder.