It always grates on me when I read that they don’t know how to reproduce “Greek Fire.”
Are we not a society of the most advanced chemical engineers ever to walk the face of the earth??? They can’t find out how the ancient Byzantines mixed up a fluid by experimenting with various materials that the ancient Byzantines had access to!!! Is there any chance that they just invented napalm millenia before its time???
I want ANSWERS, dammit! Not “lost in mists of time” bullshit…
Well?
Wow, dude…I’m pissed about no one knowing how to make Greek fire, but not that pissed. I feel your pain, man. I really do. Got a town you want to lay siege to or something?
Nah, I’m just a product of a society built on the all encompassing hand of science and knowledge, so when I hear that it can’t answer something, I get religiously irritated.
…not that it keeps me up at night or anything.
…shaking my fist at the shadows screaming “Damn you, ancient Byzantines! DAMN YOU!!!” before I break out into sobs.
We could recreate it pretty easily. The problem is, it was a closely guarded state secret, and therefore was passed down orally, as opposed to written. So we will never be able to confirm whether or not we hit upon the exact recipe.
It’s not a matter of not having the technology – we just don’t have the historical information required.
Ummm… what are you belly aching about? A few months ago there was an hour long special on the Discovery Channel all about how to make Greek fire, and what they used to deliver it.
I read Partington’s “A history of Greek Fire and Gunpowder” a while back.
Accounts of Greek Fire indicate that it was an incendiary liquid that could not be extinguished using water. Some accounts even suggest that it ignited in contact with water.
“they don’t know how to reproduce Greek Fire” is a bit misleading, we could reproduce those effects today quite nicely in a number of ways. Simple gasoline qualifies under the “not extinguished by water” for example. What is not known for certain is how the Greeks themselves achieved them, or even if the accounts are true or exaggerated.
Some scholars do indeed seem to think that Greek Fire was a petroleum derivative, based on oil imported from Persia (Iraq). Other flammable liquids available to the Greeks included alcohol, turpentine, animal and vegetable oils, tar derivatives or mixtures of any of these.
Making something spontaneously ignite when it contacts water is a little more tricky. One suggestion is roasted limestone, calcium oxide. (Limestone is calcium carbonate, roast it and it gives off carbon dioxide to leave calcium oxide.) Calcium oxide gives off a lot of heat when water is added (it reacts to form the hydroxide). I’ve read speculation that this could result in ignition if mixed with flammable materials. I’m a little sceptical until I actually see this demonstrated however.
Other speculation includes the addition of oxidising nitrates such as saltpetre to the mix. Again I’d like to see reproduction experiments to see if this increases the effectiveness of an incendiary liquid. The explosive ANFO is a mixture of fuel and nitrate, but it doesn’t burn particularly well.
So: maybe Greek Fire was Persian petroleum, thickened with olive oil to make it sticky, containing finely powdered calcium oxide and saltpetre to make it spontaneously ignite and burn fiercely. Or maybe it wasn’t. Without more explicit archaeological evidence we’re never going to know for sure.
There’s a new book out on the subject by Adrienne Mayor, entitled Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs. I’ve just bought my copy, but haven’t read it yet.