Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[hoplite14gr]

Really?

Orientation class is given to army recruits and sargents stress the importance of understanding the location of religious and burial constructions. You can find your way even in the night.

Kind regards

[Eleatic Guest]

Thanks to John I stumbled across there collections of papers on Byzantine warfare and culture:

http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/byzantine.htm

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/publishing_p ... ntine.html

[Ceasar Augustus]

You're welcome, but I'm not sure what I did.

[Ioannes_Ahenobarbus]

I think he meant this John! :lol: :wink:

[Ceasar Augustus]

Oh alright.

[Ceasar Augustus]

It gets confusing if there's people with the same name on the same thread at the same time.

[Eleatic Guest]

Did the Byzantine flamethrower boast a continuous or interrupted stream of flame?

[Paullus Scipio]

I seem to recall a manuscript showing a Galley using it's Greek fire against a foe....a continuous stream is depicted ( which was presumably of a few seconds duration), like modern flamethrowers......

[Robert Vermaat]

I seem to recall a manuscript showing a Galley using it's Greek fire against a foe....a continuous stream is depicted ( which was presumably of a few seconds duration), like modern flamethrowers......

You mean this one?

[Paullus Scipio]

Thanks Robert ! That's the very one I had in mind....I just didn't have time to go through my library at the moment......

[Eleatic Guest]

I seem to recall a manuscript showing a Galley using it's Greek fire against a foe....a continuous stream is depicted ( which was presumably of a few seconds duration), like modern flamethrowers......

I have no idea about modern flamethrowers...cant they boast a continuous flame until being empty? I was asking because I stumbled over this claim:

Flamethrower, double piston: Although the single piston flamethrower was first developed in the Byzantine Empire during the 7th century, the 10th century Chinese flamethrower, or Pen Huo Qi, boasted a continuous stream of flame by employing double piston syringes (which had been known since the Han Dynasty) spouting Greek fire which had been imported from China's maritime trade contacts in the Middle East

The author makes it look like the Byzantine "single piston" version was not capable of a continuous flame. True or not?

[Ceasar Augustus]

I'm really not sure.

[Ioannes_Ahenobarbus]

The Byzantine model was able (as far as we can tell with modern reconstructions, etc.) to produce a constant stream as long as the pressure held, just as the Chinese model.

[Eleatic Guest]

The Byzantine model was able (as far as we can tell with modern reconstructions, etc.) to produce a constant stream as long as the pressure held, just as the Chinese model.

Could you be so kind and point me to a quotable (print) source? Because I found out that the double piston system was invented by Ctesibios even earlier than in China, but I could not found any authority on Greek fire (other than Landes) who made an explicit connection with the Byzantine flame thrower, that is who surmised the use of the double acting principle in the war device.

[Ioannes_Ahenobarbus]

I can indeed do that:

J.R. Partington, "A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder"
Alex Roland, "Secrecy, Technology, and War: Greek Fire and the Defense of Byzantium"
Nicholas Cheronis, "Chemical Warfare in the Middle Ages: Kallinikos' "Prepared Fire'"
John Haldon, "Warfare, State and Society in the Byzantine World 565-1204"

Additionally, the primary sources, though a bit sketchy, are worth a good skimming for this topic. Look at the Alexiad, the Chronicle of Theophanes, and any military manual you can get your hands on (interlibrary loan).