Matthew Harffy looks at Greek Fire (also called Roman Fire), ‘the early medieval weapon of mass destruction’, and its connection with the Vikings and al-Andalus, as featured in his novel A Day of Reckoning.
Humankind has an incredible capacity for creativity. But it is a terrible reality that this talent for creation and innovation has all too frequently led to the development of ever-better ways of killing people. One such advance in weapon design was Roman Fire (or what is more commonly known as Greek Fire).
In A Day of Reckoning, the third novel in the A Time for Swords series, set at the end of the 8th century, Hunlaf and his companions find themselves in the alien world of al-Andalus. As well as different and strange foods, religions and peoples, Hunlaf and friends encounter the searing heat of an Iberian summer. The travellers from the north have to contend with more than the weather though, when they have a dangerous brush with the early medieval weapon of mass destruction, Roman Fire.
Known by many other names, such as “sea fire”, “war fire”, “liquid fire”, “sticky fire” and “manufactured fire”, it was usually deployed from ships, pumped from syphons much in the way as modern flamethrowers, to devastating effect against other vessels and their occupants.
The viscous burning liquid, once alight, supposedly even continued to burn on water, and could purportedly only be extinguished with vinegar or sand. It is not difficult to imagine the destruction such a weapon could wreak on a fleet of timber ships.
This now almost mythical substance comes from the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire). Created by an artificer from Heliopolis called Kallinikos, the development of this new incendiary weapon came at a critical moment in the Eastern Roman Empire’s history.
Debilitated after decades of wars with Sassanid Persia, the Byzantines had been left unable to effectively resist the rise of the new threat posed by the rapidly growing Arab empires. Syria, Palestine and Egypt had fallen to Arab invaders in short order, but when the Arabs turned their eyes to the imperial capital of Constantinople in the 670s, Kallinikos’ Fire was used to successfully repel the enemy fleets that had besieged the city.
It was used in subsequent centuries in other naval battles, especially in the phase of Byzantine expansion of the ninth and 10th centuries.
In the 13th century the Lord of Joinville wrote of “Greek fire” being used by the Saracens against the Crusaders during the Seventh Crusade.
It is easy to see why such a weapon would be invaluable as both a deterrent and a defence against the Eastern Roman Empire’s enemies. Other empires and nations must have envied those who possessed its power. Because of this, the formula of Roman Fire was jealously guarded by the Byzantines. The men of the Eastern Roman Empire who knew the secret of the liquid were kept captive, and if anyone tried to steal the recipe, they were summarily executed.
It was not only the recipe that was a well-guarded state secret. The exact design of the syphon system that allowed the Roman Fire to be sent in a fiery stream from one ship to another was complex. Even when a syphon was captured, enemies of the Byzantines were unable to recreate the same effects.
At some point in the later medieval period, Roman Fire ceased to be used and its formula was lost.
To this day, the exact formula is not known, but it is believed to have contained some, or all of the following: naphtha, sulphur, tar and quicklime, crude oil, pine resin, turpentine and pitch.
Many experiments have been carried out with differing results. In 2002 a reconstruction was built for a National Geographic TV programme. They used a mixture of light crude oil and pine resin and were able to destroy a ship in minutes.
As well as the ship-mounted syphons, there are records of firepots being used throughout history. Ceramic grenades that would have been filled with “liquid fire” have been found in Crete dating from the 10th century.
The Moors of al-Andalus also used some form of incendiary liquid thrown by catapults in AD 844 against a fleet of Viking ships that raided far up the Guadalquivir River and attacked Seville. It is not known if they came up with their own concoction or somehow managed to procure the recipe of the Byzantine Roman Fire, but the connection was there between Roman Fire, the Moors, and the Vikings, allowing me to spin this fiery thread into Hunlaf’s yarn as he travelled around the Iberian Peninsula.
Often when writing historical fiction, I am looking for the things that connect us to the past. The men and women in that distant land we call history were in many ways no different from us. They lived, laughed and loved just like us. And, just as in modern times, those who governed used whatever means at their disposal to expand their influence and wealth, and to jealously hold onto their power.
It would be nice to imagine that in the intervening years from the early medieval period I write about in A Day of Reckoning, we might have become more civilised.
Sadly, humankind’s ability to devise new means of killing has not lessened over time since the formula for Roman Fire was lost, and a similarly devastating weapon was developed in the 20th century in the form of napalm, a weaponised mixture of chemicals designed to create a highly flammable and gelatinous liquid.
And from the First World War onwards, the 20th century also saw frequent use of flamethrowers. In the Vietnam War, there were even boats with napalm flamethrowers mounted on them; reminiscent of those Byzantine syphons spouting Roman Fire across the waters of the Bosporus.
Maybe one day such weapons will cease to exist, but for now flamethrowers are still weapons of modern warfare, even if their use is restricted under Protocol III of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
A Day of Reckoning by Matthew Harffy, the third in his A Time for Swords series, is published in paperback on 9 May, 2024.
See more about this book.
Matthew Harffy grew up in Northumberland where the rugged terrain, ruined castles and rocky coastline had a huge impact on him. He now lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife, their two daughters and a slightly mad dog. Matthew is the author of the critically acclaimed Bernicia Chronicles and A Time for Swords series, and he also presents the popular podcast Rock, Paper, Swords! with fellow author Steven A McKay.
He’s also the author, with Steven, of Tips for Writing, Publishing and Marketing Your Novel: Practical advice from the hosts of the Rock, Paper, Swords Podcast
matthewharffy.com
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Images:
- Greek fire in use against the fleet of the rebel Thomas the Slav from the Codex Skylitzes Matritensis, Bibliteca Nacional de Madrid: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Mosaic of Imperial Privileges at Sant’Apollinare in Classe, 670s, showing (probably) Constantine IV and his brothers. He was the Byzantine Emperor when Greek Fire was created: Wikimedia (public domain)
- The Siege of Constantinople, fresco, Moldovița monastery, Vatra Moldoviței: DimiTalen for Wikimedia (CC0 1.0)
- ‘Liquid fire grenades’ from Chania and caltrops, National Historical Museum, Athens: Badseed for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- A US riverboat (Zippo Monitor) deploying napalm during the Vietnam War, c1968: US Naval War College Museum via Wikimedia (public domain)
