Humanity has unfortunately been bloodied many times in its world history, and mass crimes are not absent from the universe: genocides, ethnic cleansing, and other population purges are grim milestones of human futility.
The mass murder of the ancient Greeks served as a valuable lesson that has permeated Greek culture ever since, saving it from mass extermination of populations.
Ancient Kirra was located on the border of Phocis with Ozolia Locrida and was long tied to the Phocis alliance. Built at a key point in the Gulf, in a strategic location where roads from Thessaly, Boeotia and Aetolia intersected with sea passages from the Peloponnese and the islands, it was the closest port to Delphi.
The city is mentioned by Homer in the "Iliad" as Krissa, and by the poet Alcaeus as Kirsa, while Pausanias and Strabo call it Kirra. Kirra seems to have been inhabited as early as the Early Hellenic period and gradually developed into an important trading center (in Middle Hellenic times) as pilgrims from Delphi arrived at its port and goods were distributed in the wider area.
The great prosperity it acquired, however, produced great ambitions among its inhabitants as they became involved in efforts to control the valley of Pleistos and the Oracle of Delphi. The Delphic Amfiktionia accused them of financially exploiting the oracle pilgrims, triggering the outbreak of the ten-year First Holy War that would lead to its destruction in 590 BC.
The cruel crime
The Phocian city of Kirra was drawn into a war with the forces of the Delphic Amfiktionia, a religious-political federation composed mainly of Thessalians, Sicyonians and Athenians, but generally, twelve tribes from Central Greece and Thessaly were represented.
The citizens of Kirra may have harassed those who went up to the sanctuary of Delphi by extracting money (and invading some territories belonging to the sanctuary), but the deeper causes of the war lay in the excessive ambitions of Thessaly to gain the upper hand at last in Fokida and to control Delphi, while the Sicyonians had their own interests, namely to get rid of the pirates who were operating in the Gulf of Corinth and had become very hoarse.
The all-powerful Thessalians, in fact, had secured full control of the Delphic alliance, which they had made their puppet in attempting to take the scepter of the Delphic Oracle. Their only rivals were the Phocaeans and the still independent cities of Krisa and Kirra (its port).
The scene of the war was set, though things did not go exactly as the invaders had planned. Despite the long siege by land and sea, the city would not fall and the resistance of its inhabitants had something of the bravery of the ancient Greeks. Something had to be done to stem the resistance, and the suggestions were many. At least until the discussion turned to water.
One of the most precious commodities on the planet, the importance of which people have known since ancient times and even older. Although now, for the first time, drinking water was to be made a weapon of mass destruction. The idea was simple: everyone needs water, and if it were poisoned, then there would be a serious problem.
The Amfiktionic Congress, led by Athens and Sikyona, declared holy war on the Kirra and swore a terrible oath to the Delphic priesthood to wipe the city off the face of the earth, destroy its fields and fruit-bearing trees, and destroy everything. They had also the approval of Apollo himself, for through Pythia they received assurances that the Olympian god had cursed the sacrilegious city. If Apollo showed no mercy to the women and children, so should the allied troops!
And so they did. The allies laid siege to the well-fortified Kirra, and despite the various versions cited by ancient writers, all agree that the besiegers cut off the city's water supply (either by diverting the river or destroying the underground aqueduct) and polluted the water with Helleborus, which was a known plant for its powerful poison. Then they restored the city's water supply and the poisonous plant did its job.
To this day there is no consensus as to what ultimately happened to Kirra, although her fate was sealed. Others report that the population was decimated by the poisonous water and still others that the diarrheal disease weakened the population so much that fighting back was no longer possible. And so they were exterminated by the troops of Amfiktionia, who showed no mercy as they had promised.
After their victory, the Delphic coalitionists irrigated the fields of Kirra with poisoned water, so that nothing could ever grow again in the fertile soil. When the traveler Pausanias visited the site many centuries later, the soil was still dry. "The plain around Kirra is uncultivated because the land is still cursed and the inhabitants cannot plant trees," wrote Pausanias, who even attributed the plan of mass murder to the Athenian lawmaker Solon the Wise! His wisdom stemmed from the moral lesson when, faced with a decimated population and unfortunate children, he took a sacred oath that such a crime would never happen again on Greek soil.
Nor is there any historical consensus for the instigator of the purge of Kirra. According to Frontinus, a strategist who wrote in the 1st century AD, it was the tyrant of Sikyon and the leader of the siege, Kleisthenes, who applied the tactic. The relevant report of Polyaenos (2nd century AD) indicates that the besiegers discovered a hidden pipe leading water into the city, and according to the story, it was the general of Thessaly, Evrylochos, who advised the allies to collect large quantities of Helleborus from neighboring Antikyra and throw them into the water.
Pausanias, however, attributed the assassination plot to Solon himself, who not only thought up the fatal plan but even experimented with poisons to find the most effective one for running water! According to the traveler, the Athenian Solon diverted the flow of the river Pleistos so that it did not flow through Kirra. The besieged, however, endured the ordeal by pumping water from wells and collecting rainwater.
At this point, the Athenian lawyer and leader of the Athenian forces (according to other accounts, the Athenian general in this particular adventure was Alkmaeon) had his men collect Helleborus roots and throw them into the river. When he felt that the water was sufficiently polluted, he changed the flow of the river again to pass through the city once more. The thirsty inhabitants of Kirra drank of the poisonous water and became seriously ill.
The fourth person to whom the black plan is attributed was a physician named Nevros, one of the Asclepiads (followers of the healer Asclepius, son of Apollo). According to ancient medical sources, Nevros was the ancestor of the great physician Hippocrates. The report involving Nevros is the oldest that has come down to us, written only a century after the destruction of Kirra. Its source is the author Thessalos, who is mentioned as the son of Hippocrates.
Thessalos visited Athens at the end of the 5th century BC as an envoy from Kos and wrote that after a horse broke the secret pipeline carrying water to Kirra during a siege, Nevros helped the besiegers by throwing into the water that caused intestinal disorders in the inhabitants of Kira, hence the victory at Delphic Amfiktionia.
The end of our story, whatever it turned out to be, was extremely tragic, as the population of Kirra was completely wiped out one way or another. In fact, the narrative of the heinous incident used to be considered as belonging to the realm of myths, as our ancient ancestors could not accept that one of their own would commit such an egregious crime!
Historians, however, were convinced that the story was true when they discovered it in texts by the orator Aeschines (4th century BC) and some other still reliable Greek writers (Strabo and Diodorus of Sicily).
Fortunately, this form of totalitarian war seems never to have been used again by Greeks against Greeks in the ancient world, since the Amfiktionia Alliance was disgusted after the end of its plan and took a sacred oath not to exterminate a population again.
Wars were now to be fought on the battlefield between armies, and civilians were sidelined. Water pollution was considered unacceptable and was now strictly forbidden by the rules of war.
If the oldest recorded event of drinking water poisoning and mass murder took place in Greece, a sacred contract of honor also took place there that the universe would unfortunately not follow in the same reverent manner as it was enchanted by ancient Greek culture and its ideals. This legacy would fade into the "irrelevance" of history, as the cause has justified all means ever since.
