[Footnote 23: The vanity, or envy, of shaking the
established property of Fame, has tempted some moderns to
carry gunpowder above the xivth, (see Sir William Temple,
Dutens, &c.,) and the Greek fire above the viith century,
(see the Saluste du President des Brosses, tom. ii. p. 381.)
But their evidence, which precedes the vulgar aera of the
invention, is seldom clear or satisfactory, and subsequent
writers may be suspected of fraud or credulity. In the
earliest sieges, some combustibles of oil and sulphur have
been used, and the Greek fire has some affinities with
gunpowder both in its nature and effects: for the antiquity
of the first, a passage of Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv.
c. 11,) for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic
history of Spain, (A.D. 1249, 1312, 1332. Bibliot. Arab.
Hisp. tom. ii. p. 6, 7, 8,) are the most difficult to
elude.]