The Historical Precedent for “Wildfire” In Game of Thrones

So I was watching Game of Thrones and am near the end of Season 2. (Yhaa, I know Season 4 just came out…I am playing pop-culture catch up.) In the show and in the books (I am also half way through book 2) they introduce this substance known as “Wildfire” which sticks to any surface, burns at an incredibly hot temperature and cannot be extinguished with water.

While the modern analog for this substance is obviously napalm, there is a medieval and very real version of this substance. It was called “Greek Fire,” and the Byzantine Empire deployed it to devastating effect.

The Byzantines would send the “liquid fire” either over the walls on their enemies of through a hose mounted on a ship against other ships in close quarters sea battles.

Greek Fire was both a powerful weapon and an impressive physiological one. One Medieval source even comparing it to “Dragon Fire.”  (Once I have time I will find some good Primary source quotes and add them into this post fully cited.)

But below is an image from a medieval illuminated manuscript, (The Skylitzes manuscript, housed in Madrid) showing Greek Fire being used.

The formula for Greek Fire was guarded as a national secret by the Byzantines. Amazingly, to this day we are not quite sure how they made it.

Confession Time- While I find this topic really interesting and am trying to base blog posts off of things I think about in my day to day life (i.e. while watching Game of Thrones). This article was written as total click bait as there is a lot of GoT chatter on the Inter-webs right now. I just wanted to be upfront about that!

Feel free to leave any thoughts or questions in the comments.

And to continue the seasonal theme, the next post will be tangentially connected to Easter!

-Stephen