Key Events

424 BCE

THE BATTLE OF DELIUM

The historian Thucydides records a flamethrower device consisting of a pipe, iron snout and cauldron ‘in which were coals of fire, brimstone, and pitch, raised to an exceeding great flame’ used by the Boeotians against the Athenians on the walls of Delium.

424 BCE

GREEK FIRE c. 360 BCE

Aeneas Tacticus records a recipe for ‘inextinguishable fire’ containing