Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/62

52 but in a series of columns extending by short intervals over the whole of the enemy's line. When the men had been put into this form, Xenophon rode along the front, and addressed to them the following pithy exhortation: "Soldiers, these men whom we have before us are the only obstacle in the way of our being where we have so long been striving to be. If possible, we must eat them alive." The soldiers, after hearing these words, made vows of sacrifices to the gods in case of success; and having sung the pæan, they commenced the charge in eighty columns, with archers and skirmishers on their flanks. The enemy, seeing their wings threatened, drew off men to the right and left, and actually left a gap in their centre, at which the Greeks dashed at full speed. The sight of the Greeks running was too much for the Colchians, who now fled in all directions; while the Greeks, rejoicing in their bloodless victory, marched over the pass into some abandoned villages.

In these villages their last adventure occurred. It consisted in their finding a quantity of bee-hives, from which they ate the honey abundantly. But the honey was of a kind common to this day in Asia Minor, made from a species of rhododendron, or from the common rose laurel (nerium oleander), and having intoxicating and poisonous qualities. From the effects of this honey large numbers of the soldiers fell stupefied or maddened to the ground, and for two or three days they were hors de combat, but at the end of that time all recovered.

Two more marches brought them down to the sea,