QUOTE : How these poisons survived is really not what’s important. The point is that for some reason historians all too often choose to overlook the ancients’ skillful manipulation of nature. They’d rather believe that’s soldiers of old adhere to the highest moral codes in battle, but this just isn’t the case. The ancient world is filled with terrifying precursors to today’s sophisticated chem-bio weapons: from flamethrowers and incendiary devices, all the way to poison gases and dirty bombs. And they did it all without the help of modern science.