‘Lucullus's army faced a panoply of bioterrors, from poison arrows, stinging bees, savage bears and scorpion bombs to unquenchable burning mud.’ This one sentence gives a strong flavour of the content of Adrienne Mayor's revised and updated book. The author starts by bringing out vividly the contrast between our image of ancient warfare (brave soldiers with swords and shields against opponents similarly clad, in such battles as Thermopylae, Marathon and Cannae) and the ‘unethical’ ways in which through the centuries army leaders have undermined the Geneva Convention and its (usually unwritten) predecessors.
Greek and Roman mythology is full of examples of the devious use of weapons armed with toxins (think of Heracles, Odysseus, Achilles and Philoctetes) and this might have inspired ‘real’ people to copy some of the ingenious methods of killing found in the mythology.
The author's main aims are to detail the many varieties of unpleasant ways to defeat an opponent and to show that modern scientific developments and archaeology are able to support the sometimes unlikely claims made by the ancient historians and biographers (not only of Greece and Rome but also of India and China and elsewhere). Chapter 1 gives many examples of devious practices employed by the characters of Greek mythology and will be of particular interest to Classicists.
The chapter headings give an indication of the sorts of material covered: Arrows of Doom; Poison Waters, Deadly Vapors; A Casket of Plague in the Temple of Babylon; Animal Allies (think of elephants and watch out for pigs on fire!); Infernal Fire (starting with Medea and ending with napalm in Vietnam).
Despite the sometimes grisly contents, I found this book fascinating. There seems to be no end to the ability of men (and just occasionally women) to find inhumane ways to treat other men (and women).
I imagine it might have an appeal to those students who are devotees of online war games but is probably an unlikely purchase for a school library.
Open access
