Will conclude with some imperial portraits. Here's Constantine IV, from a mosaic in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare (Ravenna).pic.twitter.com/aFOo43PS5c
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Thing rang a distant bell so I looked it up. John Malala, Chronographa Book XVI is the source. It's a bit elliptical. A philosopher named Proclus tells Marinus to obtain "red sulphur" and grind it up. It can then be shot at anything, and the sunlight will set it on fire.
Marinus meets Vitalians ships at the entrance to the Golden Horn, they shoot the powder at them, all the ships burn and sink. An earlier pyrotechnic stunt of some kind I guess, but not really the system of Greek fire as it was invented in the later 7th c.
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Chronographia*, John Malalas*, what a plague of typos.
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