al vehemence
in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was
nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand, urine,
or vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this
powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks the liquid,
or the maritime, fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it was employed
with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was
either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched in red-hot
balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted
round with flax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil;
sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of
a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of
copper which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped
into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream
of liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at
Constantinople, as the palladium of the state: the galleys and artillery
might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but the composition
of the Greek fire was concealed with the most jealous scruple, and the
terror of the enemies was increased and prolonged by their ignorance and
surprise. In the treaties of the administration of the empire, the royal
author [21] suggests the answers and excuses that might best elude the
indiscreet curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They
should be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by
an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a sacred
injunction, that this gift of Heaven, this peculiar blessing of the
Romans, should never be communicated to any foreign nation; that the
prince and the subject were alike bound to religious silence under the
temporal and spiritual penalties of treason and sacrilege; and that the
impious attempt would provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance
of the God of the Christians. By these precautions, the secret was
confined, above four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at
the end of the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and
every art were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the
composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either discovered or
stolen by the Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of Syria and Egypt, they
retorted an invention, contrived against themselves, on the heads of