Yes, the same recipe is in Spanish hunting books of the Renaissance. I had studied them for the crossbow stuff, getting right all the bolt types and differences. They state that crossbows are better because you make no bang and you can poison the bolts so an injured prey won't escape or run very far.

Note that those poisons need to be relatively fast to make the injured animal escape harder, and also cooking must neutralize them, both issues not exactly as important when shooting people with poisons!

Jean Henri Chandler wrote:

Ok, well once again it seems to me that you are missing the point. Which I'll try to spell out: 1) We don't know that this is how the Scythians actually made arrow poison. That was only one description of the method, not by a Scythian, but by a Greek. 2) There were almost undoubtedly many methods. In fact several other methods have been described by various sources around the world. 3) Even if we assume this was the main method, we don't necessarily know the details of how or why it might or might not work. To me that is too speculative to hinge any argument from. However, since you seem very fixated on this point, here is a description I found which proposes how and why it may have worked: PLEASE NOTE however, before reading this, I don't think it's necessary to assume that this was the only, or even the main method of producing arrow poison with snake venom in Central Asia. To the contrary. "The most blood-curdling ingredient of the dreaded scythicon was viper venom. Scythian territory is home to several poisonous snake species:..

This quote is from Mayor´s book who seems to be responsible for most of the information out there about poison arrows in Ancient Greece. Her source for this, is [i]On Marvellous Things Heard by Pseudo Aristotle and example of Paradoxgraphy, that is something like Ripley´s believe it or not. The Sections even start out saying, "They Say..." That is also, at least one source for the statement about Gauls using arrow poisons.

For the sake of clarity, my point is that both Mayor and You trust the sources too much. This is really no iron clad proof that the Gauls and Scythians used poisons. Mayor goes even farther than you, relying on Myths to make very confident statements without declaring the possible weakness in her sources. She mentions Herodotus, and claims he didn't understand things and omitted things, but how can she know what he omitted? She also gives the impression that Herodotus mentions poison arrows. He didn´t. She writes in a way that is more entertaining that academic: "the Scythians were truly the “sons of Hercules."" etc.

Also in the article on Snake venom she describes the Sycthians as mixing "venom with bacteriological pathogens" as if they knew what bacteria was. This is, very misleading. Also, with the cup shaped belt buckle, none has yet been found, so we don´t really know if it is ideal for sticking arrowheads into.

The idea of a never healing wound is more of a literary trope, than a medical condition. I think it very plausible that an arrow dipped in faecal matter and rotting flesh might have more chance of causing gangrene or tetanus. However, if a never healing would is just a wound that gives you a fatal infection, then that is really not the stuff of mythology.

So, although you criticize my confidence and accuse me of making assumptions, my main point is that you should be less confident.

The 1644 book Arte de ballesteria y monteria by Alonso Martínez de Espinar covers exactly what Iagoba describes. It goes into some detail about how to make & test the poison, & how quickly it acts. The author claims a deer will often drop in ten paces, more or less. It's available on Google Books. And yes, Martínez de Espinar called it "the crossbowman's herb" ("la yerua de Ballestero").

So that's a very solid reference for hunting poison in 17th-century Europe that likely applies to earlier periods as well, given how the text presents the crossbow as a venerable weapon.

Good find Benjamin.

I'm really curious now is this if an ancient Gaelic, or possibly Greek or Iberian, Carthaginian etc. recipe.

The Portuguese language Wiki on Hellebore mentions that this erva-dos-besteiros "crossbowman's herb" was being used by Portuguese crossbowmen back to the reign of King João I, (1385-1433).

https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helleborus_foetidus

Their source is a 19th Century book, Viterbo, Joaquim de Santa Rosa de (1856). Elucidário das palavras, termos e frases que em Portugal antigamente se usaram e que hoje regularmente se ignoram vol. 1. Lisboa: A. J. Fernandes Lopes.

Interesting map too from the English wiki, showing the range of various subspecies of Hellebore, apparently the most toxic variant (Helleborus niger) is the one shown as #5 on the map, native to Northern Italy and the Alpine zone.

[ Linked Image ]

Two different species are found in France and Spain / Portugal.

Dear Jean,

Excuse me: According to the map you so kindly provided, France has two species, Helleborus foetidus throughout the country except for the northwest, and H. viridis occidentalis in the western half of the country and in the northeast; Spain has three, H. foetidus throughout the country, H. viridis occidentalis in the north, and H. lividus in Majorca; and Portugal has one, H. foetidus throughout the country.

I rely on your thoroughness and precision. Don't let me down now.

Best,

Mark Millman

Dear Jean,

Jean Henri Chandler wrote:

Mark Millman wrote: . . . I rely on your thoroughness and precision. Don't let me down now. You are right, when I noted there were two species in Spain, France and Portugal, I missed the one in Mallorca, though that wasn't always part of Spain. During the reign of Joao I (and prior) there wasn't even a kingdom called Spain. I believe Mallorca was part of Aragon until 1479. Is that precise enough for you?

Well, it's a simplification--and not an entirely accurate one--but it will do for now, as this isn't the thread's focus.

Quote:

I don't think that matters, of course, since obviously they could access any of the three, plus probably the species in Corsica and Sardinia, and in the various polities of Italy, the Alps, and the Balkans easily enough since trade was brisk all through this area.

True; there's no question of that.

I think the more interesting point is why, since arrow poison seems clearly to have had military use in the Classical world, which likewise continued in polities surrounding Latin Christendom at least through the Middle Ages, the medieval western European Christian sources arguably portray its use among members of that admittedly broad cultural category as an adjunct to hunting and there seem to be few if any unambiguous references to its being used in military contexts by medieval Latin Christians.

Quote:

J

Best,

Mark

I agree that is one of the interesting patterns which seems to be emerging here. I can think of a couple of reasons why.

It may not seem very chivalrous, or honorable etc., though this doesn't seem to curtail acknowledgement of things like throwing plague infested heads and body parts over walls during sieges (or offal and so on) or poisoning water supplies. Nor does it seem to be that much of a secret that people were using ingestible poisons and even contact poisons for assassination or murder.

The real question for me is, was the practice of the use of 'arrow poisons' or other kinds of poisoned weapons actually kept a bit discrete during the period (out of embarrassment or for legal reasons), or was it more the case of the modern filter?

Many things which actually were quite common in the medieval and Classical worlds did not make it into our historiography of these periods. We thought Greek statues were monochromatic white until pretty recently. Most people, including academics, were surprised to learn about the existence of indigenous European martial arts and fencing systems in the Latinized world even as late as the early 2000s. Until very recently almost all experts on Viking history and archeology thought the "Birka Warrior" was a man, but now we know better. (Even though the literary sources told us about female warriors for ages).

And I myself had no idea that there was a frequently used, apparently highly effective arrow poison used by hunters (and per the sources 'crossbowmen' in general) in the Iberian Peninsula and even, apparently, known in England. So ubiquitous in fact that the common name of one of the plants used is still "crossbowman's herb" in at least two countries. I have a half dozen books on hunting in the medieval world on my bookshelf and I've read them all, and I'd never heard of this until I started this thread.

I actually suspect there is a lot more to learn here and we have only scratched the surface. It's important to remember, only a very small percentage of the literature / documents from the medieval period have even been transcribed or scanned, let alone read and analyzed. We also have to keep in mind that previous generations put a filter on medieval history and many things were filtered out. In the last 20 years I've been researching the context of HEMA / WMA I've learned many quite surprising things which were basically 'hiding in plain sight" and had largely been ignored by Academia for various reasons.


One point a HEMA buddy made recently is that putting poison on a weapon would imply pre-meditation and intent to murder someone. The laws around things like fighting with swords, certainly in Central Europe, typically hinged on a kind of 'plausible deniability', in the sense of, "I felt threatened so I drew my sword and defended myself." Applying hellebore to a crossbow bolt or cobra venom to a dagger prior to use makes that notion far less plausible.

This wouldn't have relevance to war but it would make it relevant in the numerous low intensity personal and paramilitary conflicts which were constantly going on all over Latinized Europe from the Migration era through the Early Modern period.

Dear Jean,

On Thursday 4 August 2022, you wrote:

. . . The real question for me is, was the practice of the use of 'arrow poisons' or other kinds of poisoned weapons actually kept a bit discrete during the period (out of embarrassment or for legal reasons), or was it more the case of the modern filter? . . .

I agree that more research needs to be done to ensure that references to poisoned weapons in combat have not been overlooked, ignored, or concealed by earlier students.

But I am wary of the assumption that because prior ages and surrounding cultures used poisoned weapons, medieval Latin Europeans must also have done so on a significant scale. For example, the injunction in Exodus 22:18 of the King James version of the Bible, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" uses "witch" to translate Hebrew mekhashepha, which is a derivative of kashaph, which has been translated both as "to mutter" and "to cut". The first would imply the muttering of spells, while the second would refer to the cutting of herbs. In the Septuagint, a translation into Greek made by Jewish scholars in the third century B.C.E., mekhashepha is rendered as pharmakeia, which can be translated as "herbalist". (In the Latin Vulgate Bible, the word becomes maleficos, which simply means "evil-doer" without being specific about the nature of the evil done--or, for that matter, the sex of the evil-doer, as it's a neuter form.) Although the translation "witch" or "sorceress" does in fact correctly render the Hebrew (which uses a feminine form in that passage; the masculine form is used elsewhere), the use of pharmakeia has led some people to consider that it's meant to be a more specific injunction against poisoners--Reginald Scott is a well-known example, although he's later than the period we're discussing. For people who had heard of the Septuagint's version--never unknown in Latin Europe, and the text used in Greek Christianity--it may have been felt among soldiers that the use of poisoned weapon was an unnecessary threat to their salvation, and thus eschewed.

Best,

Mark

Apparently, poison arrows might go back to the stone age:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618215014111

I guess if they can test stone arrow heads for evidence of poison, they could probably test some middle age and ancient arrowheads.

I think if the use of poison arrows in war is omitted, then it is because they were too normal. I believe in general the ancient Greek sources don’t get into many details regarding weapons and ignore archery in particular. According to Mayer, Dioscorides said that the Greeks don't use poison arrows, but he was writing between 40 and 90 AD. So even if it was true in his time, it might have not been earlier. Mayor relies mostly on myth to suggest that the Greeks used poison arrows, at least at some point. If the Trojan War took place, it was around 1260–1180 BC, Homer is estimated to have lived in the 8th century BC. Herodotus wrote his Histories around 450 BC. So right there, that is a lot of time. I am not sure if the Hercules legend is older as the Trojan War stories, but he is supposed to be older as his descendents fight in that war.

One reason, I think that a taboo or moral reasons were not that the reason for abandoning, or reducing the use of poisoned arrows in warfare, is that it would take an activist campaign to stop it, and that would lead to a lot more evidence. It would be much more easily to develop a taboo for something that was only done by foreigners. Also, when one compares it to the modern ban on biological and chemical weapons, they were first used by everyone and then banned. Part of the reason they were banned, is that they weren’t so effective. Gas masks work (if they are worn) and gas can be affected by the wind, so that it blows the gas back to the attacker.

Self poisoning is a risk with arrow poisons too, and also in an indirect way. Most of the arrow poisons were also used as medicine as well as poison for murder (apparently the Greek word for drug/poison is ambiguous if it is supposed to be helpful or harmful). Here is an interesting article about poison and drugs in Rome: https://brewminate.com/poisons-poisoning-and-the-drug-trade-in-ancient-rome/ Here is a quote:

Quote:

At the end of the 1st century AD the satirist Juvenal and others denounced their decadent society, claiming that poisoning had become a status symbol, an accepted way for mothers to get rid of husbands and stepchildren, and for children to get rid of rich fathers who lived too long

Now if the potential victims of poison are seen as rich fathers and husbands, then, that describes the Roman Senate, not to mention the Emperor. So any ruler would have to balance having a large supply of poison for his archers, against the risk that someone uses that supply to poison him. This explains why monkshood/wolfsbane was banned in Rome. The same issue could exist with snakes. Mayor mentions people complaining about foreign handlers bringing snakes to Rome, a general fear of snakes might have discouraged the development of a snake venom industry.

The article from Brewminate makes it sound like that most of the plants were collected from the wild by professionals and mentions certain people groups that were supposedly skilled with drugs as well as snakes.

I think a good direction for research is the pharmaceutical perspective. There might be some list of drug prices, that for example give us an idea of how much these poisons cost. I wonder if the usage of poison arrows by the Chinese is tied to their drug industry, or if they just documented it better.

Back to the idea of a taboo, I definitely could see that, if snake charming was seen as a pagan religious practice, that it would have been abandoned by the Christians.

Just for some context regarding the moral authority of the Church in the Late Medieval period - at any one time thousands of individuals and dozens or hundreds of communities or regions all over Latin Europe were either excommunicated or under interdict. I'm working on a paper right now about an incident in Wroclaw / Breslau from the 14th Century, in which that town was placed under interdict by the regional bishop, which the townfolks ignored, the bishop then got permission to send an inquisitor, who was run out of town, so the Pope placed the town under excommunication, which the townfolks also ignored, and later during a conference in Prague the city councilors paid two guys to assassinate the would-be inquisitor.

In one of the most extreme cases I ever heard of, in 1460 (some sources say 1462) a Condottiere prince, lord of Rimini, and noted art patron Sigismondo Malatesta, who had already been excommunicated (to little effect), was Canonized by the Church as a Devil during his own lifetime (and burned in effigy). This was allegedly triggered because after a long list of other misdeeds, he had allegedly raped a (14 year old) papal envoy in front of his laughing troops. They also launched a "Crusade" against him which was joined by the Duke of Milan, the King of Naples, and the Pope. Though it did affect his reputation, and coincided with a major military defeat, even this extreme measure did not end his career. Sigismondo went on to serve as a condottiero for Venice after this, and briefly plotted to assassinate another Pope in 1467. He finally died in 1468.

Presumably, based on all the very bad things he did in his lifetime, Sigismondo is indeed burning in hell, but while he walked the earth life fear of sin did not seem to give him much pause. Nor did his more or less open and extreme flouting of both Christian and secular law and moral standards, serve to sufficiently isolate him from his peers so as to 'cancel' him.

Dear Ryan and Jean,

On Friday 5 August 2022, Ryan S. wrote:

. . . One reason, I think that a taboo or moral reasons were not that the reason for abandoning, or reducing the use of poisoned arrows in warfare, is that it would take an activist campaign to stop it, and that would lead to a lot more evidence. It would be much more easily to develop a taboo for something that was only done by foreigners. Also, when one compares it to the modern ban on biological and chemical weapons, they were first used by everyone and then banned. Part of the reason they were banned, is that they weren’t so effective. Gas masks work (if they are worn) and gas can be affected by the wind, so that it blows the gas back to the attacker. . . .

And later, Jean Henri Chandler also wrote:

. . . But we know that these mortal and venal sins did not disappear from humanity once they were baptized as Christians. In fact people certainly continued to steal, kill, commit adultery, take the lord's name in vain, fail to keep the Sabbath, make graven idols and so on. We know that in particular they used all kinds of gruesome means to homicide in warfare, as I've pointed out several times in this thread, everything from tossing plague ridden heads over castle to poisoning wells, to setting attackers on fire with various murderously cunning pyrotechnic weapons and so on. They also massacred prisoners and civilians in cases too frequent to count. All often with the direct and sometimes literal blessing of Church priests and prelates. . . .

The postulate--which I offered as a hypothetical example of a way that an avoidance of poisoned weapons might spread--treats the worry about the Biblical injunction as a piece of soldiers' folklore rather than an explicit ecclesiastical prohibition. Neither an activist campaign nor any great respect for the Church would be necessary for something like it to be informally transmitted and widely current. Nor, on the other hand, would it have universal effect; there are always people who ignore or repudiate commonly held beliefs. Further, evidence for such a belief would be subtle at best, because of the general lack of non-elite records surviving from the Middle Ages. In any case--and I evidently did not emphasize this enough when I originally floated the idea--there is currently no hint of evidence for it and I do not suggest that this actually happened. I constructed it as a plausible example of a potential way in which a disinclination from widespread use of poisoned weapons in military contexts might arise. If research cannot discover clear evidence of military use of poison on weapons in medieval Latin Europe it seems necessary to explain why, and this could be one possible avenue of investigation, along with economic factors, convenience, worries about accidental self-poisoning, failure or loss of records, etc. An equally plausible--and, again, thoroughly hypothetical--idea is that soldiers felt that they might have had some chance of escape or survival after losing a battle, but if their enemies knew them to have used poisoned weapons any such chance would be lost because those enemies would make a point of hunting them down for using poison. A perhaps more plausible idea is that by the Middle Ages, the benefits simply weren't perceived as outweighing the costs of large-scale use.

Best,

Mark