{"id":24771,"date":"2014-03-21T07:50:32","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T12:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=24771"},"modified":"2014-03-21T07:51:47","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T12:51:47","slug":"byzantiums-secret-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/03\/21\/byzantiums-secret-weapon\/","title":{"rendered":"Byzantium&#8217;s secret weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Military History Now<\/em> had a guest post from <a href=\"http:\/\/militaryhistorynow.com\/2014\/03\/19\/greek-fire-nine-little-known-facts-about-byzantines-secret-weapon\/\" target=\"_blank\">\u039aonstantinos Karatolios<\/a> talking about the Byzantine secret weapon known as &#8220;Greek Fire&#8221;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The thousand-year Byzantine Empire could not have survived through the centuries without its powerful military. But Constantinople\u2019s mighty army and navy didn\u2019t just keep enemies at bay, they also helped it to expand into new territories and ultimately dominate the whole of the Mediterranean for hundreds of years. Of course, while the Byzantines\u2019 stunning battlefield success was in part a by-product of military knowledge inherited from the old Roman Empire, it was also born out of new tactics and weaponry. One example of this is Greek fire. Also known as <em>thalassion pyr<\/em>, <em>skeyaston pyr<\/em> and <em>medikon elaion<\/em>, this incendiary liquid, which could be squirted or hurled into the ranks of an enemy, was perhaps the most fearsome of all of the empire\u2019s armaments. Its use, whether on land or sea, verges on legend and yet almost all we know about Greek fire remains clouded in mystery. We are sure of one thing however \u2014 it was used with devastating effect throughout the whole course of the Byzantine Empire.<\/p>\n<p>Here are nine little known facts about Greek fire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think there&#8217;s a typo in the list, as it mentions the first recorded use of the weapon by Anastasios I in 541, which was actually the middle of the reign of Justinian I. Anastasios I reigned from 491 to 518.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Military History Now had a guest post from \u039aonstantinos Karatolios talking about the Byzantine secret weapon known as &#8220;Greek Fire&#8221;: The thousand-year Byzantine Empire could not have survived through the centuries without its powerful military. But Constantinople\u2019s mighty army and navy didn\u2019t just keep enemies at bay, they also helped it to expand into new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,7,663],"tags":[858,872,703],"class_list":["post-24771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-history","category-weapons","tag-byzantium","tag-chemistry","tag-middleages"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6rx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24771"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24773,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24771\/revisions\/24773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}