Byzantine military manuals
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This article lists and briefly discusses the most important of many military treatises on military science produced in the Byzantine Empire.
Byzantine hand-siphon for projecting Greek fire, illumination from the Poliorcetica of Hero of Byzantium
Greek fire
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Greek fire was an incendiary chemical weapon manufactured in and used by the Eastern Roman Empire from the seventh through the fourteenth centuries. The recipe for Greek fire was a closely-guarded state secret, but historians speculate it may have been made by combining pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium phosphide, sulfur, or niter. Roman sailors would toss grenades loaded with Greek fire onto enemy ships or spray it from tubes. Its ability to burn on water made it an effective and destructive naval incendiary weapon, and rival powers tried unsuccessfully to copy the material.
Στόλος Ρωμαίων πυρπολῶν τὸν τῶν ἐναντίων στόλον, "The Roman fleet burn the opposite fleet down" – A Eastern Roman Empire / Byzantine war ship using their "secret weapon" Greek Fire against a ship belonging to the rebel Thomas the Slav, AD 821. (12th century illustration from the "Madrid Skylitzes").
Use of a cheirosiphōn ("hand-siphōn"), a portable flamethrower, used from atop a flying bridge against a castle. Illumination from the Poliorcetica of Hero of Byzantium.
Proposed reconstruction of the Greek fire mechanism by Haldon and Byrne