Long, long centuries before Hannibal the torch was known. In that strange story of Gideon and his three hundred men who overcame the Midianites, the torch or lamp was one of the weapons used. The vast host of the Midianites, fearing no hostile attack, was spread over a great valley. Gideon placed his little band of men on the hills around the enemy's camp, each man at a considerable distance from the next, so that they made a line nearly surrounding the entire valley. Every man had a trumpet in one hand, and a lamp or torch covered by an upturned pitcher in the other. This arrangement of the lamp and the pitcher allowed a little light to be thrown upon the ground directly beneath. The men could thus avoid stepping upon dry sticks and making a noise which might alarm the guards around the camp of the Midianites. At the same time the light was concealed from the eyes of their enemies.
When all was ready a shout was raised, "The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" and the pitchers were thrown with a great crash upon the ground. The sudden noise of voices and of the breaking pitchers awoke the Midianites from a deep sleep; the trumpets and the shouts turned their eyes to the hills. All along the line of the three hundred men spread out in a circle around them blazed the three hundred torches. As it was the custom in those days to have a torch or a lamp indicate the headquarters of a general, the Midianites in their sudden terror naturally thought that an immense army was surrounding them. They imagined that Gideon had hired vast forces from Egypt and elsewhere, for they supposed that each of the several hundred torches indicated a general with all his followers. Their only thought, therefore, was to flee as quickly as possible. They ran against each other, and, unable in the darkness to distinguish friend from foe, they killed their own men. The entire army of one hundred and thirty-five thousand men perished.
It is not certain whether the lights which were covered by the pitchers came from lamps or torches. Gideon lived three thousand years ago, and at that time both torches and lamps were used. He was a general of the Israelites, and they certainly had lamps when in Egypt many years before the time of Gideon. Lamps were also used by the Greeks and the Romans.