Greek fire

“ But that darkness was licked up by the fierce flames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and illuminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek fire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to some vengeful deed. ”

“ The fact that the first recorded use of fire-arrows on Greek soil was made by Persian archers,123 lends some probability to the view that Greek fire was originally borrowed from the East; but the Greeks assuredly invented the sea-fire which was the palladium of the Empire for several centuries. To the discovery of saltpetre they have no legitimate claim. The claim put forward in their name is based partly on a metaphor,124 partly on the assumption that the effects of sea-fire could have been only produced by a mixture containing saltpetre; and it cannot be sustained. ”

“ The flame that lives within our Prytaneia was first kindled on Athene's hearth in Attica; and should it burn dim or be extinguished, we must needs travel back to the sacred home of the virgin goddess for fresh fire. ”

“ Fire stone may be considered the wild-fire; but this term is applicable to any composition, as the Greek fire, which, when inflamed, burns with rapidity, and communicates its fire to surrounding objects with quickness. In such cases, the combustion is so rapid, that buildings, &c. are immediately wrapt in flames, which seem almost to defy all human power to extinguish. ”

“ The Greeks everywhere were then regarded as a people adept in the still mysterious weapons; and all Europe had a respect for those who had invented that wonderful agent "Greek fire," which would burn under water, and which no man now-a-days knows how to make. ”

“ It appears that in the reign of Louis XV, a chemist of Grenoble, Dupre de Mayen, discovered a composition similar in effect to the Greek fire of Callinicus, which was exhibited at Brest, and proved successful, but the preparation was kept secret. The original Greek fire was used in 1291, and also in 1679.... Writers have defined it to be a sort of artificial fire, which burns with increased violence when it mixes with water.... That it was a liquid composition, we may infer from the modes of using it, which were several. ”

“ In short, we feel the want of our youth every where.
I enjoyed all the delights and regrets which mere local associations can call up, a few months ago, on revisiting Athens after many years’ absence. On the 6th of May 1827, I had witnessed the complete defeat of the Greek army. I had beheld the delhis of Kutayia sabring the flying troops of Lord Cochrane and General Church, and seen 1500 men slain by the sword in less than half an hour, amidst the roll of an ill-sustained and scattered fire of musketry. ”

“ No Greek or Roman army crossed a frontier without taking an altar whereon burned night and day fire brought from the public council hall and temple at home. The Egyptians had a fire burning night and day in every temple, and the Greeks, Romans, and Persians had such a fire in every town and village. ”

“ But, say some, in that case one can hardly imagine how Æschylus wrote the first tragedy without anticipating a great part of the second—the noble account which Prometheus gives of the victory of Zeus, his own offence, and the blessings it conferred upon men. Hence arises a theory that the Fire-bringer was the last play of the trilogy in which the Titan, reconciled to Zeus, became a local deity of Athens, the giver of fire. ”

“ But the next invention, the discovery of the use of fire, was a departure without a parallel to anything in the kingdoms of Nature. It placed mankind by a single act in a position of god-like authority over the living world. It is not surprising that the discovery of fire is surrounded by countless legends. In Greek mythology the first use of fire is attributed to Prometheus, the Fore-Thinker, the man who thinks ahead. ”

“ I have seen Pentelicus burning for three days—a brilliant illumination for Athens—and, in sailing from Poros to Nauplia in midsummer, I counted twenty-six fires on the mountains of Peloponnesus; but all these could do nothing more in the way of damage than to help on a little the aridity into which Attica and the Argolid are helplessly sinking. Where it scarcely ever rains during six months of the year, the grass and weeds become like tinder, and a fire once started from some shepherd’s carelessness is difficult to stop. ”

“ The Greeks had taken a position on the charred ground, where they themselves were safe from the flames, and were awaiting the result, sword in hand.
The conflagration, as it gathered headway, seemed to become a monster animated by a living spirit. One broad sheet of flame swept high into the air, roaring like a hungry beast, and throwing up clouds of smoke that hid the southern sky. With deadly swiftness it devoured the lake of reeds before it, leaving behind a bare and level plain of ashes from which here and there rose smoky spirals. ”

“ Indeed, in Greece, wherever an eternal fire is kept up, as at Delphi and Athens, it is not maidens, but widows, past the age to wed, that tend it. When any of these fires chance to go out, as, for instance, the sacred lamp went out at Athens when Aristion was despot, and the fire went out at Delphi when the temple was burned by the Persians, and at Rome in the revolutions during the time of the wars with King Mithridates the fire, and even the altar upon which it burned, was swept away ”

“ In Greece, in a civilised race, this very natural old idea survives, though fire is not the possession of a crane, or of an old woman, but of the gods, and is stolen, not by a hawk or a coyote, but by Prometheus, the culture-hero and demiurge. Whether his name ‘Foresighted’ is a mistaken folk-etymology from the root manth, or not, we have, in the ancient inevitable idea, that the original patentees of fire would not willingly part with their treasure, the obvious origin of the myth of the Fire-stealer. ”

“ I know fire to be capable of exposing and curing superstition. If thou art willing to abandon this folly, the element of fire shall light thy way. This same fire burned the temple in Argos, with Chrysis the priestess; and that of Artemis in Ephesus the second time after the Amazons.
And the Capitol in Rome was often wrapped in flames; nor did the fire spare the temple of Serapis, in the city of the Alexandrians. At Athens it demolished the temple of the Eleutherian Dionysus; and as to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, first a storm assailed it, and then the discerning fire utterly destroyed it. ”

“ Our modern sympathies are apt to side with the giants and centaurs. An age of order likes romantic violence, as landsmen safe in their houses like [61] storms at sea. But to the Greek, this battle was full of symbolical meaning. It is the strife, the ultimate victory, of human intelligence, reason, and gentleness, against what seems at first the overwhelming power of passion and unguided strength. It is Hellas against the brute world. ”

“ Xenophon here recounts how Agesilaus sent up ten men with fire in pans, to enable those on the heights to make fires and warm themselves; the night being very cold and rainy, the situation very high, and the troops not having come out with blankets or warm covering to protect them. They kindled large fires, and the neighboring temple of Poseidon was accidentally burnt. ”

“ Each of the lads binds a black stone on his head, signifying that he wishes to become as strong as the stone. Also they make the sign of the cross on their feet and legs and jump over the fire.547 On Midsummer Eve the Greeks of Macedonia light fires after supper in front of their gates. The garlands, now faded, which were hung over the doors on May Day, are taken down and cast into the flames, after which the young folk leap over the blaze, fully persuaded that St. ”

“ One exquisite portion of the frieze, which had for twenty centuries stood forth resplendent over the historic city, was carelessly dropped and broken into atoms. A Greek who was standing near, watching this shameful devastation, brushed away a tear, and with a sob exclaimed pathetically: "Telos!" (That is the end of it!) and turned away.
No one has condemned the plunder of the Acropolis more trenchantly than Byron, in the lines:
"Cold is the heart, fair Greece! ”

“ The flames, in which the Greeks enveloped the bodies of the departed for the purpose of destruction; the flames, into which the ancients cast everything once dearest to the living, are now the securest repository for these relics. With trembling fear the surviving friend reads the leaves no eye has ever seen, save those now so firmly closed, and if, after a glance, too hasty even to read them, he is convinced these letters and leaves contain nothing which men deem important, he throws them quickly upon the glowing coals—a flash and they are gone. ”

“ Defeat can on occasion leave men their self-respect or even their pride; as it did after Chaeronea in 338 and after the Chremonidean War in 262, not to speak of Thermopylae. But the defeat of 404 not only left Athens at the mercy of her enemies. It stripped her of those things of which she had been inwardly most proud; her 'wisdom', her high civilization, her leadership of all that was most Hellenic in Hellas. The 'Beloved City' of Pericles had become a tyrant, her nature poisoned by war, her government a by-word in Greece for brutality. ”

“ The plague of the eastern wind [7] at the sounding of the first trumpet, was to fall upon the Earth, that is, upon the nations of the Greek Empire. Accordingly, after the death of Theodosius the great, the Goths, Sarmatians, Hunns, Isaurians, and Austorian Moors invaded and miserably wasted Greece, Thrace, Asia minor, Armenia, Syria, Egypt, Lybia, and Illyricum, for ten or twelve years together. ”

“ Among the Greeks the hearth or fireplace itself was an object of worship.
These early peoples regarded the blessing of fire as so great that they believed it must have originally belonged to the gods alone. Many of them had traditions that the gods did not permit men in the earliest ages to have any knowledge [Pg 15] or use of fire. Myths or stories have been found among the people of Australia, Asia, Europe, and America, telling how fire had been stolen from the gods and brought down to men. ”

“ We peep into a little Greek town, and see in dainty miniature the bride coming from her chamber with torch-bearers and dancers, the people gazing from their doors, a quarrel between two persons in the market-place, the assembly of the elders to decide upon it. In another quartering is the spectacle of a city besieged, the walls defended by the old men, while the soldiers have stolen out and are lying in ambush. There is a fight on the river-bank; Ares and Athene, conspicuous in gold, and marked as divine persons by a scale larger than that of their followers, lead the host. ”

“ It was, however, the very magnitude of the hostile forces which saved the Greeks from impending ruin; for these forces had to be fed in dried-up and devastated plains, under scorching suns, in the defiles of mountains, where artillery was of no use, and where hardy mountaineers, behind rocks and precipices, could fire upon them unseen and without danger. There was more loss from famine and pestilence than from foes,--a lesson repeatedly taught for three thousand years, but one which governments have ever been slow to learn. ”

“ But not only Athens was to be defended; all Greece was in peril; the invaders must be met by land as well as by sea. Greece is traversed by mountain ranges, which cross from sea to sea, leaving only difficult mountain paths and narrow seaside passes. One of these was the long and winding defile to Tempé, between Mounts Olympus and Ossa, on the northern boundary of Greece. There a few men could keep back a numerous host, and thither at first marched the small army which dared to oppose the Persian millions, a little band of ten thousand men, under the command of a Spartan general. ”

“ A cry of horror burst from the slaves and attendants as the flame caught the heavy folds and ran upward in leaping spirals; but the cry was lost in the fierce triumphant shout of the captains. Every man grasped a torch and ran to spread the conflagration. The great Hall of Xerxes was enveloped in flame and smoke so quickly that the incendiaries themselves had barely time to escape.
Rushing from the doorways with the torches in their hands, the Macedonians hastened from palace to palace, scattering destruction. ”

“ If ever I built a temple gracious in thine eyes, or if ever I burnt to thee fat flesh ... of bulls or goats, fulfil thou this my desire; let the Greeks pay by thine arrows for my tears.’
Apollo heard the cry of the priest, and swift was his answer. For he hastened to the tents of the Greeks, bearing upon his shoulders his silver bow, and he sped arrows of death into the camp.
Dogs, mules, men, all fell before the arrows of the angry god. The bodies of the dead were burned on great piles of wood, and the smoke rose black toward the sky. ”

“ In Strongyle fire clearly ascends from the ground, and in Hiera fire spontaneously blazes up on a height in the island, and near the sea are convenient baths, if the water is not too hot, for often it is difficult to bathe by reason of the great heat. ”

“ Having in vain tried to repel the assailants in the open field, and finding themselves blocked up in their city, they set fire to it with their own hands; consuming in the flames their women, children, and servants, while the armed citizens marched out and perished to a man in combat with the enemy. [365] Such an act of brave and even ferocious despair is not in the Grecian character. In recounting, however, the languid defence and easy submission of the Greeks of Knidus, it may surprise us to call to mind that they were Dorians and colonists from Sparta. ”