Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & Scorpion Bombs

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By: Tommy Goloboy and Rhys Adams

The Siege of Dura-Europos (256 CE)

Almost two-thousand years have passed since nineteen brave Roman warriors met their end defending the Roman-held Syrian city of Dura-Europos. As they were expecting to fend off Persians from their siege of Dura-Europos, instead the young men were met with a wall of black smoke, which quickly began to make its way into the lungs of these soldiers. As they clung to their chainmail armor, choking, desperate for life, the smoke turned to acid in their lungs, and all nineteen of them perished.

What Happened?

The Persians had a peculiar strategy in the siege of this Roman city. The Roman soldiers were the victims of a crystalline of a tar-like petrochemical of Sulfur (S₈) and Bitumen (HOOC-H₂-C -H₂-C). The Persian-dug tunnels under the city that the Romans thought were to be used for attacking soldiers to sneak into the city, were instead used as a vessel for a deadly chemical weapon. Though few lived to tell the story, it remains a harrowing tale of the power of chemical warfare.

Bitumen

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As you can see, the formula for Bitumen is pretty complicated, so we are going to simplify it to the part in the previous slide.

The Chemical Formula

The tragic fates of the Roman soldiers were sealed by a substance that by all description is either Sulfuric Acid (H₂SO₄) or Mustard Gas (C4H8Cl2S). From this we can deduce that the chemical reaction is something along the lines of this:

S8+16(HOOC-H-C -H₂-C) = H₁₆S₈O₂₄

Wait, what?

You may be thinking “That doesn’t add up!”. That is because it doesn’t. There would have been a lot of excess at the scene. Especially Oxygen, large amounts of which were found in the ruins of Dura Europos. CH₄, or methane was also found on the scene.

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