Xenophon's Honey
It is an unfortunate fact that there are many books which have a brilliant reputation but which, when you come to read them, turn out to be either not nearly as interesting as you had been informed or, in some cases, downright boring. Just such a book is Xenophon's Anabasis.
Touted as a fascinating "boys' own" adventure story, a precis of the tale sounds well enough. In the year 401 BC the Persian prince Cyrus - not to be confused with Cyrus the Great - rebelled against his old brother Artaxerxes II. As well as his own conscripted army he hired 10,400 Greek hoplites and 2,500 peltasts (or lightly armed skirmishers), but he carefully failed to tell them what his real purpose was and pretended that he was marching against rebellious Pisidians in south-west Turkey. The Greeks only smelled a rat when they arrived at Tarsus in the extreme south-east of the country and had to be persuaded to carry on in the usual Greek way - a 50% increase in pay!
In due course they arrived at Cunaxa, 46 miles north of Babylon, to find Artaxerxes waiting for them with 1.2 million men. When the battle began the heavily armed and armoured Greeks swept all before them, first defeating the left wing of the Persian army which was right in front of them and then attacking and putting to flight the right wing as well. While doing so, however, Cyrus rather imprudently charged the Persian centre in an attempt to kill his brother and was himself killed, which rendered continued fighting pointless.
The Greeks, who had suffered minimal casualties thanks to their armour, now found themselves without supplies in the middle of hostile territory. Tissaphernes, a leading Persian satrap, offered to lead them to safety but a day or so later he invited the Greek generals to a feast and promptly seized them and sent them to Artaxerxes, who killed them. Learning from their mistake, the remaining Greeks elected new leaders, among whom was Xenophon, and headed north, fighting their way through the Persians who tried to stop them and then through the Kurds, who were as violent a people then as they are now.
The Georgians and Armenians were only slightly less unfriendly, so you can imagine the feelings of the men when they heard a glad shout from the head of the column, "Thalassa! Thalassa!" - "The Sea! The Sea!" - and realised that they had won through against all the odds. They arrived at Trapezus, a Greek colony on the southern shore of the Black Sea just as its inhabitants were rebelling against the local overlords, the Mossynoeci. The arrival of 10,000 battle-hardened warriors led to a victory for Trapezus and in gratitude the people helped the Greeks find shipping home to Greece.
As I said, the story sounds interesting and exciting, but if you try to read it you will find yourself bored beyond belief by a flood of names that mean nothing to you (both geographical and personal) and unimpressed by the Greek penchant for making long speeches at the drop of a Corinthian helmet. (If you are really determined, however, you can find it on the internet - but don't say I didn't warn you.
Nevertheless, the Anabasis is a mine of information about people and places, customs and historical situations, in northern Iraq and eastern Turkey and scholars are still extracting nuggets from Xenophon's masterpiece. Just recently I came across another interesting snippet of information that, I must admit, went right over my head when I read the book. It was the story of a minor victory won by superior weapons and tactics against a disorganised but hostile tribe.
"When the Hellenes charged like that, the enemy stood their ground no longer, but betook themselves to flight, one in one direction, one in another, and the Hellenes scaled the hill and found quarters in numerous villages which contained supplies in abundance. Here, generally speaking, there was nothing to excite their wonderment, but the numbers of bee-hives were indeed astonishing, and so were certain properties of the honey. The effect upon the soldiers who tasted the combs was, that they all went temporarily quite off their heads, and suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea, with a total inability to stand steady on their legs. A small dose produced a condition not unlike violent drunkenness, a large one an attack very like a fit of madness, and some dropped down, apparently at death's door. So they lay, hundreds of them, as if there had been a great defeat, a prey to the cruellest despondency. But the next day, none had died; and almost at the same hour of the day at which they had eaten they recovered their senses, and on the third or fourth day got on their legs again like convalescents after a severe course of medical treatment."
Apparently the rhodadendrons in the region of Pontus are a particular variety, Rhododendron ponticum, which is highly toxic. When bees collect the pollen they collect the toxins too which are incorporated into the honey they produce. The Pontus bees have become tolerant to the poison - and possibly the inhabitants whose hives the Greeks plundered had become tolerant as well - but eating the honey can be devastating to those not used to it!
In 67 BC the Roman general Pompey led his troops against Mithradates, king of Pontus. According to a note in Srabo's Geography, some of Mithradates' men set out bee hives as a trap. Roman legionaries were as keen on sweet things as anyone else and they fell on the honey with delight. While they were incapacitated, Mithradates men fell on them and massacred them. Fortunately there had not been enough honey to go round, so it was only a small detachment lost from Pompey's legions and Mithradates was quickly defeated and deposed.
The next person we know of who used the H-weapon was the redoubtable Saint Olga of Kiev, whose husband Igor was killed by a wild Slavic tribe known as the Drevlians. To add insult to injury, the Drevlians sent twenty ambassadors to propose that Olga marry their prince, which would make him ruler of Kiev in place of Olga's three-year old son. She promptly buried them alive.
However she managed to get word to Prince Mal, indicating that she was now favourably inclined to his proposal, but that she would require an escort of nobles to sell the idea to her people. Mal complied and the group of Drevlian nobles were warmly welcomed by Olga, who offered them a relaxing sauna to recover from the rigors of the journey. Unfortunately, the bath house caught fire and equally unfortunately, the bath house door just happened to be locked - from the outside - and the nobles all burned to death.
Olga was distraught over this unfortunate accident and to show her goodwill invited the Drevlians en masse to her husband's funeral feast, where the Drevlians were served with as much mead as they could drink - mead made from Pontic honey! 5,000 Drevlians perished in the ensuing massacre!
Now that the gloves were off, Olga marshalled her army and marched against the Drevlian capital. The Drevlians realised they were up against something hot and begged for mercy, offering to pay tribute of furs and honey in exchange for their lives. Olga took pity on them and declared that she would spare them for a nominal tribute of three pigeons and three sparrows from each household. The Drevlians, relieved at getting off so lightly, set to work and soon a procession of people holding bird cages appeared outside the Russian camp.
That night Olga got her soldiers to tie small pieces of sulphur to each bird and then let it go. The birds took off in one huge flock and flew straight back to their homes - the dove cotes and beneath the eaves of the houses. Within minutes the entire city was a sea of flames with Drevlians fleeing in all directions. Rounded up by Olga's soldiers, the Drevlian leaders were either killed or enslaved (no one knows what happened to Prince Mal) and the rest of the survivors were forced to pay a much heavier tribute than a few birds!
In 1489 a band of Tartars captured a Russian camp and found there several casks of mead. Now either the Russians had developed a tolerance to the poison, or it had somehow become concentrated as the mead fermented, or, more likely, the Russians used it in small quantities to increase the intoxicating effect of their normal drink, but whatever the reason, the Tartars drank the mead neat with the usual dire consequences and the Russians rushed back and recaptured the camp, massacring the helpless Tartars.
However toxic honey wasn't all bad: as indicated above, it could be added to drinks to make them more potent. In fact, there was a lively trade in "mad honey" down to the 1600s, with European innkeepers importing the stuff from Turkey to disguise the fact that they were watering their beer!
In ancient times there was a cult of Melissai living on Mt Parnassos, near Delphi, whose "bee priestesses" used honey to put themselves into a frenzy which, to the ancient Greeks, indicated that they were possessed by the spirit of god. The Melissai uttered prophecies in much the same way as the Delphic oracle. I have never been able to get my head round the idea that going out of your mind and raving is a sign of closeness to the divine, but the Greeks firmly believed it and the idea is not extinct to this day.
Honey made from rhodadendrons still claims a few victims every year, but you need not panic and throw out all your honey just because there are a few rhodadendrons growing in your local park. Most rhodadendrons contain very little toxin and western bees are not tolerant, so if they collect enough toxic pollen to make the honey dangerous, they will probably die off themselves before they actually make any honey! If anyone offers you a bottle of Turkish honey, however, you might be advised to taste it with caution and if it is reddish in colour or has a bitter taste, beware!
1.2 million men Needless to say, this figure has been disputed by modern scholars, but it is accepted that Artaxerxes' army outnumbered Cyrus' forces by a substantial amount. For example, Cyrus had 600 cavalry but his brother had 6,000; Cyrus had 20 chariots fitted with scythes, but his brother had 200. Return
sulphur I suspect that there is a missing step in the story. The sulphur was fastened with strips of cloth and I can't help but wonder whether these strips were set on fire to act as fuses for the sulphur. In 946, when Olga was 56, she was converted to Christianity and was given the title of saint for her efforts to spread Christianity in Kiev. One hopes that she wasn't quite as ruthless in her evangelism as she was in her dealings with unwelcome suitors! Return
© Kendall K. Down 2012
