The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 02: (From the Rise of Greece to the Christian Era)
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 02: (From the Rise of Greece to the Christian Era)
World history
When the men were all in their places, and they had formed the companies
into columns, there were about eighty companies of heavy-armed men, and
each company consisted of about eighty men. The peltasts and archers
they divided into three bodies, each about six hundred men, one of which
they placed beyond the left wing, another beyond the right, and the
third in the centre. The generals then desired the soldiers to make
their vows to the gods; and having made them, and sung the paean, they
moved forward. Chirisophus and Xenophon, and the peltasts that they had
with them, who were beyond the enemy's flanks, pushed on; and the enemy,
observing their motions, and hurrying forward to receive them, was drawn
off, some to the right and others to the left, and left a great void in
the centre of the line; when the peltasts in the Arcadian division, whom
Aeschines the Acarnanian commanded, seeing the Colchians separate, ran
forward in all haste, thinking that they were taking to flight; and
these were the first that reached the summit. The Arcadian heavy-armed
troop, of which Clearnor the Orchomenian was captain, followed them. But
the enemy, when once the Greeks began to run, no longer stood its
ground, but went off in flight, some one way and some another.
Having passed the summit, the Greeks encamped in a number of villages
containing abundance of provisions. As to other things here, there was
nothing at which they were surprised; but the number of bee-hives was
extraordinary, and all the soldiers that ate of the combs lost their
senses, vomited, and were affected with purging, and not any of them was
able to stand upright; such as had eaten a little were like men greatly
intoxicated, and such as had eaten much were like madmen, and some like
persons at the point of death. They lay upon the ground, in consequence,
in great numbers, as if there had been a defeat; and there was general
dejection. The next day no one of them was found dead; and they
recovered their senses about the same hour that they had lost them on
the preceding day; and on the third and fourth days they got up as if
after having taken physic.[37]
[Footnote 37: That there was honey in these parts, with intoxicating
qualities, was well known to antiquity. Pliny mentions two sorts of it,
one produced at Heraclea in Pontus, and the other among the Sanni or
Macrones. The peculiarities of the honey arose from the herbs to which
the bees resorted; the first came from the flower of a plant called
_oegolethron_, or goatsbane; the other from a species of rhododendron.
Tournefort, when he was in that country, saw honey of this description.
Ainsworth found that the intoxicating honey had a bitter taste. This
honey is also mentioned by Dioscorides.]
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