Hannibal and Chemical WarfareAuthor(s): A. DawsonSource: The Classical Journal, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Dec., 1967), pp. 117-125Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296548Accessed: 20/10/2008 08:36

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HANNIBAL AND CHEMICAL WARFARE

The mythology of the Greeks, which their oldest writers do not pretend to have invented, was no more than a light air, which had passed from a more ancient people into the flutes of the Greeks, which they modulated to such descants as best suited their fancies.

-Francis Bacon, The new Atlantis

3 HE STORY OF Hannibal's cattle strata- gem told by Livy (22.17) and Silius

(Punica 7.311ff.) is absurd. A general in danger of starvation does not risk 2000 beeves on a harebrained scheme. And why did the Romans panic? They were familiar with cattle; familiar too with the practice of igniting and releasing pain-maddened beasts. Yearly at the feast of Ceres (19 April) Ovid's countrymen did precisely this to foxes.1 That seasoned troops abandoned a vital sector for such a reason is incredible. Polybius has a Greek's flair for the plau- sible. In him no oxen are released. They are accompanied by mobile troops and driven not, as in Livy, before the main Punic army, but up a neighboring ridge. The Roman guards deduce from the lights that the enemy are escaping by an undis- covered route. They move to intercept them and are engaged by the Carthaginian light-armed; while Hannibal with the main body slips through the now unguarded de- file (3.93.2ff.). More sensible this; but like many smooth emendations it leaves some things unexplained. It does not, in the Greek phrase, "save the phenomena." Why did not Fabius, encamped on a nearby hill, intercept Hannibal? Why does Livy use

1 Ovid, Fasti 4.681ff.

language like (22.17.5) ueluti jlammas spirantium miraculo attoniti? Fire-breath- ing beings belong to the realm of the super- natural. Then there is ut humana apparuit fraus (22.17.6). Why should it ever have seemed not humana? And why the un-Ro- man conduct of maiore tumultu concitant se in fugam? Faced with the uncanny, we must accept a paradox: the likelihood of an explanation is diminished by its reasonable- ness.

When Homer's Odysseus has got the Cyclops in a drunken sleep (Od. 9.106ff.), why does he not slay the giant with his sword? Because, says the poet, he and his comrades would have been trapped, unable to roll away the mighty boulder that blocked the entrance. But why was the huge olivewood club left conveniently in the cave for Odysseus to cut a weapon from, instead of being carried by its owner in his shepherding? Because, says the poet, it was still too green for use. But why did Odysseus not use his sword to blind Polyphemus? No answer. Here the ra- tionalizing process breaks down. As with Hannibal's stratagem, a feeling of strange- ness is left: there is an unaccountable residue. And the reason is the same. There were kinds of knowledge which Homer and Polybius, with all their brightness, did not have.

Livy's Hannibal story actually teems with these oddities. They engaged the attention of William Maginn, Irish scholar and wit, the Captain Shandon of Thack- eray's Pendennis (he was born in Cork),

A. DAWSON

who wrote well on literary matters, espe- cially Shakespearean, before dying untimely in 1842. There is the question of the 'vin- egar' (acetum) which blasted a passage for Hannibal in the Alps (21.37). Nepos, Florus, Eutropius, and Orosius, observes Maginn in a notable contribution to Black- wood's magazine,2 use powerful words of bursting or cutting, quite inappropriate to vinegar: so does Juvenal with his montem rumpit aceto (10.153). Livy (21.37.2f.) talks of felling gigantic trees in the vicinity (arboribus circa inmanibus), of a huge pyre erected against the rock face, the heated stone made friable by slaking it with vinegar (infuso aceto), the calcined rock then breached with iron tools. Silius does not mention vinegar: so densely for- ested is his peak that the Carthaginians need only to denude the thickest parts, and the heat alone renders the cliff putris (3.640 ff.). Appian (Hann. 4.15) follows Livy but adds that the embers were quenched with water and vinegar (v'Sar Kal o0eE), showing that the superabundance of vinegar lightly assumed by Livy bothered him. As Polyb- ius rationalized the original cattle story by introducing a second pass, so Appian antici- pates, or answers, objections by mixing the vinegar with water. Polybius and Plutarch are silent about the vinegar, but the former, visiting the area not long after the event, reports Ta pEv aKpa KaL Ta 7rpO' Tag v7?rep3oXas

aVrlKovTra TreXco a8,evpa Kat VOXM 7ravT' E?T

(3.55.9). Perhaps he hoped to nip in the bud the story already circulating and later to have a long life breathed into it by the Paduan professor who did not leave his armchair. Where did the vinegar come from? Ernesti thought that sour wine used by the soldiers was meant; but, says Ma- ginn, the quantity required is too much, and Hannibal, moving as fast as possible, was not likely to encumber his march with vast quantities of liquid against an unfore- seeable contingency. He quotes Descuret,

2 "Did Hannibal know the use of gunpowder?" Magazine miscellanies by Dr. Maginn (1841) 30ff. There is a copy in the British Museum.

editor of Nepos in Lemaire's Bibliotheca classica: "The vinegar of all Spain would scarcely be sufficient for Hannibal to dis- solve merely calcareous rocks: in this case the rocks are sienite, indissoluble by acetic acid or the strongest acid conceivable." A more modern editor sums up devastatingly: "How much vinegar would be needed to soften a limestone cliff 1000 feet high? Whence the vinegar? For the suggestion that the Carthaginian troops drank posca, a cross between wine and vinegar (see Luke, XXIII, 36) is not to be taken seri- ously. Why, in any case, waste vinegar, when cold water would have served? How came 'gigantic trees' on heights which we are told a few lines later are bare of vegeta- tion? Where would the pyre have to be built, if the flame was to produce any effect? The story belongs to the same cate- gory as the equally well-known legend (un- known to any respectable historian) that Archimedes fired the Roman fleet at Syra- cuse by reflecting the sun's rays from an ingenious arrangement of mirrors. Neither operation would have occurred to a man in his senses."3

Then there are the strange events at Lake Trasimene (22.4-6). Here Flaminius is am- bushed in a pass by the lakeside. A mist rising from the lake, says Livy, settled more thickly on the plain than on the hilltops: the Romans, consequently, could not see one another but the enemy could. He for- gets that when the Carthaginians descended into the plain they would be equally handi- capped. We hear of a din and tumult preventing the Romans (but not the Car- thaginians) from hearing commands, of men crushed by their accoutrement, and, as if that were not enough, of an earth- quake which did widespread local damage but which, in the ardor of fighting, the Roman troops did not notice. Silius des- cants (5.61 ff.) upon the same theme. "Suddenly there was a splitting sound

3 John Jackson, Hannibal's invasion of Italy (Oxford 1926) 124.

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along the cliffs and-oh horror!-the hills quaked, peaks rocking all the length of the range. The pinewoods on the summit swayed, and rock fragments showered on the combatants." He goes on to speak of chasms yawning in the earth, admitting daylight to the frightened ghosts in Hades, and concludes: "The black lake, shaken from its ancient bed, rose to the height of the cliffs and bathed the Tuscan woods with a spray unknown before."

At Cannae too there is strangeness, but of a different kind. Here the villain is a sirocco (Vulturnus) and the dust swept by it over the plain. Like the mist at Trasi- mene it is curiously selective. Hannibal encamped with his back to it, "an arrange- ment," says Livy (22.43.11) with unneces- sary (and therefore suspicious) emphasis, "bound to prove helpful when the battle started, for the Carthaginians would fight with their faces away and only their backs exposed to the blast, against a foe blinded by driving dust." Polybius tells a different tale (3.110ff.). From him it appears that Hannibal crossed the Aufidus and offered battle on the north bank: the Romans declined. Hannibal sent back the Numidi- ans to harass the enemy on the south bank. Next day Varro followed them with the main army. Hannibal followed Varro, and the catastrophe took place on the southern side. Hannibal, if this account is correct, was willing to fight regardless of the posi- tion of the wind, though his maneuvers in battle might be dictated by it. Polybius is certainly right: he had no axe to grind, whereas Livy by glossing over these move- ments could blame the Roman humiliation on "natural causes." History for the Ro- mans, as Cicero makes clear, was an opus oratorium maxime, and Livy was a profes- sor of rhetoric. More oddity meets us in the course of the battle. "Some five hun- dred Numidians," says Livy (22.48.2ff.), "rode up to the Roman lines, ostensibly as deserters." They were admitted on throw- ing down their weapons and escorted to the rear. At a critical point in the action they

snatched up shields strewn around and, using swords concealed under their cuirasses (gladios occultos sub loricis), attacked the Romans from behind, causing-a type of phrase now becoming familiar-maiorem aliquanto pauorem ac tumultum. The bat- tle then became a butchery. Silius too (9.491ff.) dwells on Vulturnus as the cause of the disaster, but adds an unexpected detail. Before roaring over the Daunian land he "plunged himself in the white-hot crater of Etna, catching fire from there; then he lifted up his flaming face and flew forth with a horrific whistling." What emerges here is that this was no ordinary sirocco.

Here then we have four oddities, all relating to Hannibal: vinegar that blasts rocks, soldiers too busy being killed to no- tice an earthquake, illuminated cattle that stampede an army, a fiery wind that renders thousands of Romans blind and helpless. The effect always seems greater than the alleged cause would naturally warrant, and the phenomena always help the Carthagin- ians, never the Romans. Scholars have been as inept in their exegeses as the authors in their descriptions. On the "de- serters" at Cannae Jackson comments4: "The whole story was rightly dismissed as 'childish' by Niebuhr." The tale found in later historians, that Hannibal increased the volume of dust at Cannae by ploughing the battlefield in advance, elicits the re- mark5: "[this] may be ranked with the vinegar of XXI, 37 and the Numidians of the next chapter but one [i.e., the 'desert- ers']." To dismiss, however, is not to explain, and imputing nonsense to the datum can signify a failure to cope. When Indians, unfamiliar with sailing ships, saw Columbus descending from his vessel, he seemed to be emerging "from the side of a huge swan." Childish indeed; but we can- not conclude that there was no Columbus and no incident. People describe unfamiliar phenomena in the words available to them

4 Op. cit. 140. 5 Op. cit. 139.

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that seem closest: inadequacy of vocabu- lary does not prove the content fictional. In Jackson's critique of the "vinegar" story the parallel with Archimedes and his mir- rors was good, but not in the sense intended. Certainly the two "legends" are "in the same category": they both refer to scien- tific devices, things little studied by "re- spectable historians." Maginn about 1830 knew the truth; but Jackson was writing in an age when "a gentleman's knowledge of science" was a phrase to be uttered with complacency.

What happened to the Romans at Trasi- mene is similar to the experience of the Persians who, during Xerxes' invasion of Greece, attempted to pillage Delphi. "When the barbarians had advanced near the tem- ple of Athene Pronaia," says Herodotus (8.37), "at that moment thunder fell on them from heaven, and two crags, broken away from Parnassus, bore down upon them with a loud crash, killing many . . . a panic struck the barbarians." A couple of centuries later the Gauls were repulsed from the same place in much the same way (Paus. 10.23.2). Now the first god of Del- phi was Dionysus (Apollo was a usurper): viticulture was a Phoenician art, and the detailed knowledge of the Mediterranean basin which enabled Delphi later to guide Greek colonization could have come only from Phoenician maps and records. Hence Delphi was a Phoenician foundation; and Hannibal too was a Phoenician. Among their accomplishments that people of many arts included mining (e.g., at Thasos), and this presupposes the ability to blow up rocks. The Delphic priests and Hannibal must have possessed explosives. At Delphi the thunderous noise and showers of rocks came from mines placed in the gorge and detonated by hidden operators. (Priest- hoods doubtless possessed many secrets which they kept to themselves as too dan- gerous to be imparted to the profanum uulgus. The complaint of the Holy Office against Galileo was not so much that he spread false doctrine, more that he spread

true doctrine indiscriminately.) At Trasi- mene too there was a defile with steep rocky sides, and Hannibal-the "Grace of Baal"-was a kind of priest-king. The details given by our authorities are readily explicable if this sacerdotal Phoenician mined the area. He mined the sides of the gorge (hence "falling rocks"): he mined the ground (hence "earthquake," "yawning chasms," etc.): he mined the shallows of the lake (hence the preternaturally high waterspout and the trees sprinkled with unfamiliar dew). He had only to lure the Romans into the pass, and this the impetu- osity of Flaminius, which he had carefully studied, enabled him to do. He detonated the mines (hence the "din" that deafened the Romans): the explosions produced white smoke (hence the "mist"): Romans receiving the blasts had their shields and helmets driven into their bodies; hence that curious remark of Livy (22.5.3), onerati magis iis [armis] quam tecti-why in this battle alone? This effect of shelling is only too well known to our generation: at Verdun, for example, men's skulls still helmeted were smashed vertically down into the centers of their chests. Once the key is known, everything falls into place, and the colossal carnage among the de- moralized Romans becomes comprehensible.

The blasting of the Alpine rock was also done by chemistry. Hannibal's sappers had no forests for fires, no reservoirs of vinegar, but they had water. Maginn suggests that they mixed charcoal with niter and sulphur, kneaded the mixture with water, set fire to it, and blew up the rock. This is quite feasible. Potassium nitrate, i.e., saltpeter, occurs in the soil of many hot countries, and would certainly be known to Phoeni- cian miners. (It is still a miners' standby and has possibly given rise to the expression "peter out.") Native sulphur can still be dug up in volcanic Sicily, long a Cartha- ginian domain. Charcoal is only a matter of heating wood. If mixed in the proportion 75 : 10: 15 and intimately incorporated by grinding, these three substances make gun-

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powder. On detonation this would produce a thick white smoke. This, together with the fires needed to convert wood to char- coal, would give rise to stories of vast con- flagrations at the rock face. As for the King Charles' head of the whole legend, "vinegar," acetum, this is a corruption of a Phoenician word which still appears in modern Spanish aceite, 'oil': compare the use of "oil of vitriol" for sulphuric acid. The mountaineers who heard it and passed it on might easily pronounce it in such a way that it was mistaken for Latin acetum. The trouble given by the Phoenician accent is seen from the story of the guide who confused, or pretended to confuse, Casinum with Casilinum (22.13.6); and the readi- ness of the classical peoples to regard foreign words as barbaric pronunciations of their own appears from their fanciful ety- mologies, ridiculed in Plato's Cratylus.

What now of the cattle stratagem? If Hannibal had 2000 beasts-and this is the figure given by Polybius-and if his army numbered, say, 30,000 men, that means two oxen to fifteen men. "So far as meat is con- cerned," notes Maginn, "here is ample pro- vision for more than two months; it is more than the Poor Law Commissioners [date circa 1830] allow their clients in four." He adds that so rapid a marcher would not have encumbered himself with a supply train. His soldiers, moreover, came from North Africa, Spain, and southern France, where the peoples were moderate in the use of animals for food. In any case, all accounts agree that he was in danger of starving. Everything points to one conclu- sion: he had no cattle. What then were those lights? They must have moved hori- zontally, at the distance of a man's chest or face above the ground, and emitted a dull roar like the lowing of cattle: in short, they were rockets. They would not do much damage, but their effect on morale would be devastating. "Even the French soldiers," remarks Maginn aptly, "trained as they were to the use of firearms and long exposed to their action, quailed at

Waterloo before the then newly invented Congreve rockets." The picture of Silius (7.367ff.) fits well the discharge of rockets: uolitantes flammae ... indomiti ignes nullo spargente uagantes . . . errans Volcania pestis. His phrase accenso sulphure sug- gests to the informed that the propellent contained this element as an ingredient, but the sentries who use the words are specu- lating about an earthquake caused by ig- nited sulphur. To them the flames seem to move spontaneously (ipsos), but their only interpretative resource is to invoke celestial or seismic disturbances. Silius' sources have furnished him with the clues, but his igno- rance of chemistry prevents him from fol- lowing them to their conclusion. Livy's language too can now be better understood: ut humana apparuit fraus-one expects "their consternation diminished," but in- stead: cum maiore tumultu concitant se in fugam. Though humana in the sense that Hannibal had devised it, the fraus involved forces which to the Romans were "big magic": hence their terror increased. The inactivity of Fabius is also explained. He was on a hill just opposite but sent no reinforcements and allowed Hannibal to march by under his nose with an entire army, an operation which must have taken some time. He was clearly in a state of demoralization during the whole night, and yet he had not been in the path of the "cattle." The cattle motif may have been introduced into the story by the Romans, dreaming up something that would account for their supineness without imputing cow- ardice; or Hannibal himself may have put it about, to avert suspicion from his real secret. Maginn compares the night attack of Gideon on the Midianites (Judges 7), which Roger Bacon long ago supposed to be a covert description of gunpowder, the crashing pitchers being the noise, and the flashing lamps the blaze, of some explosive mixture.

Maginn divined the chemical secret be- hind the above three exploits, but he was baffled by Cannae. "We cannot conclude,"

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N

La 0

S R

A S A

L,~ ?

H

FIG. 1 L: Larger Roman camp. S: Smaller Roman camp. H: Hannibal's camp. R: Roman infantry. A: Africans. CS: Celts and Spaniards.

he says, "without drawing the attention of our military readers to the battle of Cannae and asking of them to explain the manoeu- vre by which the legions were drawn into the wedge or crescent of Hannibal, and there totally destroyed, suffering such a clades as never has occurred before or since, almost without resistance, and in an incal- culably short space of time." One reader will now attempt such an explanation, regretting that Maginn will never know it.

The paucity of our sources and the cava- lier attitude towards topography common to ancient historians make feasible no more than a likely reconstruction. But Polybius does state clearly (3.114.8; cf. 113.2) that in the line-up the Carthaginians faced north and the Romans south, so that neither side was bothered by the rising sun (a detail repeated by Livy 22.46.8); and mod- ern surveyors of the river Ofanto (the Aufi- dus) assure us that in the relevant reach the general flow is northeast.6 Polybius also states that on the fatal morning (3 August 216?) the larger Roman camp, containing two thirds of their army, was on the same side of the river as Hannibal's (3.111.11), while the remaining third were in a smaller camp on the opposite bank (110.10). Fur- ther, both Varro and Hannibal crossed the

6 T. A. Dodge, Hannibal (Boston and New York 1891) 360.

FIG. 2 N: Numidian 'deserters.' Other sigla as in Fig. 1. The arrow at the lower right indicates the wind direction.

river to get to the battlefield (113.2,6). Diagrammatically represented, these facts produce something like Fig. 1. On the field Hannibal's famous "crescent" (Polybius' word) was there to tempt the Roman infan- try, and they were tempted. They drove against it, straightened it, then pushed it into a pocket behind the lines. The Celts and Spanish would naturally retreat towards the river (easily fordable) and their own camp. But in this case, if I am right, calculation dictated this direction too; and the Romans were lured into a V-shaped depression between low ridges, occupied by Africans in fine Roman armor. This maneuver would give the position of Fig. 2. After this the Romans seem to have done nothing except let themselves be killed. "Into this breach," wrote Dodge,7 "the Roman infantry now poured, shouting their cry of victory. They were met, not by a flying foe, but by the fatal consequence of overaudacity. So closely had their lines been formed, and so sharply had they become pressed in, that the soldiers had no room left to wield their weapons." But why? Why were trained Roman sol- diers guilty of "overaudacity"? What was "sharply" pressing them in? They out- numbered their adversaries by at least

7 Op. cit. 375.

N

6

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seven to four. Why had they "no room left to wield their weapons"? There was room enough in front of them. They had finished off the battle in the center: de- functi . . . proelio uno, says Livy. The Celts and Spanish were in flight: the Romans had been slashing at their backs (quorum terga ceciderant 22.47.9). The enemy front here had ceased to exist: their army had been cut in two. How could there have been any envelopment, with this huge arc cut from the circle? And yet "in an incalculably short space of time" (to requote Maginn) 70,000 Roman soldiers lay hamstrung or dead in this pocket.

The key lies in a detail which Livy pre- served and which Polybius had omitted, as he omitted the detail about the "vinegar," because he did not understand it: the Numidian "deserters." These had been taken to the rear and would therefore be behind the Romans entering the pocket. Now the sirocco (Vulturnus) was blowing from the southeast, i.e., from the Numidi- ans towards the Roman acies (see Fig. 2). In this position the five hundred men drew from beneath their cuirasses objects which glinted in the sun and looked like swords. But they were not swords. They were metal tubes containing some kind of lach- rymatory gas that attacked the eyes with a burning sensation. It was carried over the Roman lines by the wind, helped along also by the sides of the V, from the tops of which the Africans, themselves out of its line, could watch its effects. Blinded and in pain, the Romans dropped their weapons. These the Numidians, safe themselves be- cause the wind was blowing the gas for- ward, picked up. After that it was simply a matter of killing helpless foes staggering around or writhing on the ground, the Afri- cans joining in from both flanks. This explains why the Carthaginian center dis- solved so mysteriously-the Spaniards and Celts were getting out of the way of the advancing cloud of gas-and also why the Romans, with a wide breach in the enemy

line before them, could take no advantage of it. But one thing went wrong. The Roman troops who had been behind the Numidians guarding them, and were conse- quently unaffected by the gas, attacked. The Numidians turned to meet them and were getting the worst of it: segnis eorum cum aduersis pugna erat (22.48.5). (The blinded Romans at the front were the auersa acies, just mentioned by Livy [22.42.4] and the attackers were aduersi.) But at this juncture Hasdrubal, sweeping back with 8000 cavalry from the rout of Aemilius on the riverbank, intervened and extricated the Numidians (subductos ex media acie 22.48.5). Now we see why the Africans were caede jessi (22.48.6), why, as Cottrell notes,8 more men were killed at Cannae in a couple of hours than the British Army lost during the murderous battle of Pas- schendaele in 1917, though that battle lasted four months. Now we see why there is so much talk of "hamstringing" in this battle. This was the quickest way of im- mobilizing Roman soldiers who were well protected by breastplates and whose hands, clasped in agony to their faces, would bring the forearms before the throat: the slaugh- ter and spoliation could be done later. We can now understand why the Vulturnus in Silius had to visit Etna's furnaces before reaching Cannae: the high degree of burn- ing, far greater than the normal effect of the sirocco, had to be explained somehow. We can now understand Livy's soldiers, found with their faces buried in the soil (22.51.8): the pain-crazed men were trying to find cool wet earth to relieve the fire in their eyes, knowing perhaps that mud was used in the treatment of ophthalmic ail- ments. It now becomes clear also why later historians-to the annoyance rather than the enlightenment of John Jackson- assert that Hannibal ploughed the field at Cannae (Zonaras 9.1). Mulling over sur- vivors' reports, their authorities-the early commentators-deduced that some act of

8 L. Cottrell, Enemy of Rome (London 1960) 145.

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Hannibal had made the sirocco peculiarly lethal. That he did it this way, by increas- ing the quantity of stinging dust in the area, is just what would occur to a race of farmers unversed in science.

This was not the only occasion on which Hannibal used gas.9 A vignette of Nepos shows that age did not wither his infinite variety. Serving as admiral of the Pontic king Prusias, he found himself facing the numerically superior fleet of the Roman- izing Eumenes of Pergamum. He ordered, says Nepos, the largest possible number of venomous snakes to be collected and en- closed in earthenware jars. When in the course of the battle the Pergamene vessels were pressing hard, Hannibal ordered these jars to be thrown onto their decks. Nepos had now better take over (Hann. 11.5f.): quae iacta initio risum pugnantibus conci- tarunt, neque quare id fieret poterat intel- ligi. postquam autem naues suas oppletas conspexerunt serpentibus, noua re perterriti, cum quid potissimum uitarent non uiderent, puppes conuerterunt. The features to note here are the laughter, the curious phrase about the ships being "filled" with snakes, and the rapid demoralization of a previ- ously confident enemy. Snakes stand for something poisonous. Something poisonous can only "fill" ships if it is gaseous in form. The clue to this particular poison gas is the detail about the laughter. Hannibal used nitrous oxide or laughing gas, and enclosed it in earthenware vessels because these would break on impact. The Pergamene sailors would begin laughing, but it would soon be realized that this was morbid laugh- ter. The fighting urge would disappear, and those capable of rational action would quickly row their ships out of danger;

9 There is an important piece of evidence connecting Han- nibal with both mining and lethal gas. Pliny says (H.N. 33.96) that Hannibal opened silver mines in Spain, which were still producing in his (Pliny's) time. At 98 he speaks of a gas emanating from these which was injurious to all

breathing creatures: odor ex argenti fodinis inimicus omni- bus animalibus. All that I ascribe to Hannibal-knowledge of rock blasting and of damage to animals by certain vapors -seems here confirmed. The mines in question are just north of Linares and still called los pozos ('wells') de A nibal.

which was what Hannibal wanted. Here, as with the rockets, he was aiming at destruc- tion of morale. A new dimension is added to his already tremendous reputation as a soldier: he is revealed as a pioneer in chemi- cal and in psychological warfare. And we glimpse the reason why the stock epithet for him became dirus; not terrible in a human way, like Pyrrhus or the Gauls, but more like a Fury, a comet. He possessed knowledge and power beyond what the Romans thought normal in a man.

As to how Hannibal prepared these gases, certain speculations may be relevant. Am- monia is probably what did the damage at Cannae, liquefied under the pressure of generation in a rigid container and then dis- charged in a strong wind from 500 nozzles. It is still the standby in armed robberies, suggesting that not much knowledge and skill are required for this use of it. The camel is an animal not unknown in North Africa, and it was in fact as a sublimate from the distillation of camel dung that sal ammoniac (NH4C1) was first obtained. One part of this, intimately mixed with three parts of slaked lime, will, under heat, produce ammonia. N20 (laughing gas) is a common product of controlled explosions in mines, and this is where Hannibal's coun- trymen had doubtless observed its effects. Nitric acid can be produced from saltpeter, and this, if neutralized with ammonia, gives ammonium nitrate. Nitrous oxide (N.0) is then obtained by heating. We are dealing with the people who produced Tyrian pur- ple, the secret of which is still not fully understood: the chemical skill which my theory presupposes is far more elementary.

It would appear that the barbarians who dwelt on the periphery of the Greco-Roman world were in some ways more knowledge- able than the classical peoples, in whose writings stories of miracles and overreadi- ness to ascribe puzzling phenomena to divine interference mask ignorance of ele- mentary science. But the ignorance which Homer displays in his story of Polyphe- mus is different in kind. Much in Homer

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comes from what Rhys Carpenter calls10 "trafficking with fairyland and the magic Mdrchen-world." Achilles' choice between short-lived fame and inglorious longevity is one such folktale element: another, to quote the same authority, is "his comprehension of his horse's speech, foretelling him doom as he takes him into battle. To fairy lore belong also his marvellous weapons, the ashen spear which 'none other of the Greeks could wield,' the divine armor forged by Hephaistos, and the cloud of fire that burns around his head. When the gods wrap their favorites in mist and make them invisible on the battlefield or snatch them suddenly away to city or camp, this too is fairytale mechanism and smacks of witchcraft quite as strong as though the heroes had clapped on their heads the famous Tarnkappe, the cap of invisibility-which, incidentally, Greek myth knows well and calls correctly by name."10 Knowledge of the "world of faery" and its conventions enables us to see what Homer could not, why the giant had to be blinded by the olivewood club, even though Odysseus' sword would have done the job as efficiently. It was because the club belonged to Polyphemus. To quote Carpenter again:"1 "it belongs to a certain folktale motif that the monster cannot be slain by ordinary human means, but only by some special weapon of his own, which by good luck or superior knowledge may be discovered somewhere in his fearful haunt." Carpenter goes on to cite Beowulf, who in the underwater home of Grendel's mother is unable to kill the she-troll except with the giant sword which had belonged to Grendel.l2

The operative phrase is "by ordinary human means." The Greeks were human- ists par excellence. They lived in the world of the eye and the voice, the 7ro'Xk: not for them

10 Folk tale, fiction, and saga in the Homeric epics (Uni- versity of California Press 1962) 21.

11 Ibid. 22. 12 Ibid. 21.

forests and enchantments drear Where more is meant than meets the ear.

But this animism after a long underground passage beneath the Greco-Roman sea bed rose again like the river Alpheus, in the "romantic" movements of the vernacular literatures and arts. Wordsworth said:13

One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man,

Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.

Beethoven thanked the curlews who helped him to write his Pastoral Symphony, and Yeats wrote:14

Come away, O human child, To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping

than you can understand.

This would not have meant much to the Greeks or their Roman imitators. The merest soupcon of romanticism vis-a-vis Nature caused misgiving. Even Plato's minuscule sketch of scenic beauties at the beginning of the Phaedrus drew reprimands from Strabo (9.1.24) and Plutarch (Amat. 1). Their assumption that nomads and food-gatherers exist only to be converted into ciues was as fantastic as the related assumption of the alchemists that all metals are striving to become gold. There is a tough life in old ways of acting and feeling; mere political conquest does not extirpate them, any more than the automobile has extirpated the horse. The barbarians re- tained ancestral modes of apprehending the world and from nonhuman creation, to which they remained closer, they wrested powers unknown to the complacent civi- lizers. An old way of thinking confronted classical man in the Polyphemus story: one of Nature's secrets, in Hannibal's chemis- try. In both cases he was baffled: "EXXAAqv 7raes aeL'.

Sevenoaks School, Kent A. DAWSON

13 The tables turned. 14 The stolen child (from Crossways).

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