Earliest Chemical Warfare Felled Roman Fort

Jan. 30, 2009 -- A cramped tunnel beneath a Middle Eastern fort might have produced the oldest evidence of chemical warfare, according to a CSI-style review of archival records.

Presented at the recent meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, the review focused on the dramatic remains of 20 Roman soldiers unearthed in the 1930s in the city of Dura-Europos, Syria.

Sitting on a cliff overlooking the Euphrates River, the Roman fort at Dura was the site of a violent siege by the powerful Persian Empire around 256 A.D.

No historical record of the battle exists, but archaeological remains have helped piece together the action.

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The Persians used a range of siege techniques to enter the city. These included laying mines in tunnels underneath the walls to breach them. Intending to hold their ground at all costs, Roman defenders responded with counter-mines.

In the 1930s, archaeologists unearthed dramatic evidence of the fight: In one of the tunnels, a pile of bodies, still completely fitted with their weapons and armor, testified the horrors of the battle.

At the time, the researchers believed that the trapped Roman soldiers had died after the tunnel collapsed.

The reality was more gruesome, according to Simon James of the University of Leicester in England.

Mixing archival records and extensive fieldwork at the site, James was able to reconstruct the coldest of cold-case crime scenes, and came to the conclusion that the Roman soldiers had been deliberately stacked atop one another at the mouth of the countermine by the Persians.

"They used their victims to create a wall of bodies and shields, keeping Roman counterattack at bay while they set fire to the countermine, collapsing it," James said.

A question, however, remained: How did the Roman soldiers die? Killing almost two dozen fully armed men in a space less than 6 feet high and 36 feet long would have required "superhuman combat powers, or something more insidious," James concluded.