FIRE, GREEK, an invention of the middle ages which was often employed in the wars of the Christians and Saracens. According to Gibbon, this combustible was need at the sieges of Constantinople in the ith and 8th centuries. It was afterwards employed by the caliphs against the Crusadevs ; but the limn tion of gunpowder changed the nature of military tactics. There is much uncertainty as to the nature of this Greek Fire. It is supposed to have been a compound of naptha, sulphur, and pitch ; and Gibbon thus describes its effects From this mixture, which pro duced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, hut likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress ; instead of being extin guished, 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 annoy
ance of the enemy it was employedwith equal effect by sea and by land, in battles or in sieges. It was either poured from the ram parts 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 lire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of' copper, 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.'