Honey of Trebizond

I wouldn't recommend putting this on your morning toast, but here is how to make honey of Trebizond.
  1. Plant an entire field of deadly poisonous plants.  
  2. Introduce a bee nest.
  3. Let the bees collect the pollen.
  4. Collect the honeycomb.
The honeycomb and the honey will be toxic.  This really works.  How do we know that?  Because it happened in real life.

Back in ancient times, toward the end of the Roman Republic, the great General Pompey led an army into Asia Minor where he faced the rather competent local ruler Mithridates.  One of his detachments passed through Trebizond, or at least, they tried to.  The locals knew that the honey thereabouts was poisonous, due to the large number of toxic rhododendrons in the area.  But the Romans didn't know that.  They ate the honeycomb and became ill.  The locals immediately attacked and slaughtered the Romans.

Here's what it says in Strabo's Geography (from the Perseus version):
The Heptacomitae [those are the locals] cut down three maniples of Pompey's army when they were passing through the mountainous country; for they mixed bowls of the crazing honey which is yielded by the tree-twigs, and placed them in the roads, and then, when the soldiers drank the mixture and lost their senses, they attacked them and easily disposed of them.

Alas, if only they had paid attention to the classics.  Three hundred and fifty years earlier, the famous mercenary captain Xenophon had written about his men falling ill after eating honeycomb in the same area.

Here's what Xenophon had to say:
Now for the most part there was nothing here which they really found strange; but the swarms of bees in the neighbourhood were numerous, and the soldiers who ate of the honey all went off their heads, and suffered from vomiting and diarrhoea, and not one of them could stand up, but those who had eaten a little were like people exceedingly drunk, while those who had eaten a great deal seemed like crazy, or even, in some cases, dying men. So they lay there in great numbers as though the army had suffered a defeat, and great despondency prevailed. On the next day, however, no one had died, and at approximately the same hour as they had eaten the honey they began to come to their senses; and on the third or fourth day they got up, as if from a drugging.


Are things getting worse?

With the depressing news of yet another atrocity, this time against satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, I thought I'd take a moment to ask whether the world is becoming a worse place, at least in terms of mass murder.  Note this is different to serial murder.  A serial killer kills one person, then waits a long time before killing another.  Mass murder is killing many in a short space of time.

I think it is getting worse.  The solo mass murderer, or death delivered by a handful of deranged people, is a modern phenomenon.

I can't recall from the ancient world, or even the mediaeval, or the Renaissance, or even in Elizabethan times, a single instance of mass murder being conducted by one man acting on his own.

The reason is easy to see.  In the time of my hero Nicolaos, the most powerful individual weapon available was a bronze sword.  A nutter could kill at most a few people in the street before being taken down.

And a mass murderer would be taken down quickly.  In a world without a police force, citizens were naturally inclined to intervene when they saw a crime being committed.  Surviving court cases from classical Athens that involve violence in public always mention passers-by running into the action.   Not something you see much these days.

But a modern mass murderer can do a whole lot better than a bronze sword.  The growth in power of lethal force that can be carried by a single individual is incredibly important.

The same nutter today would have a couple of automatic weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammo, a pouch of grenades, and maybe a few bombs to plant. He could kill hundreds.

Then there's the unfortunate fact that there are more people inclined to mass murder.

The population today is 7 billion.   In Nico’s time it was roughly 200 million. The percentage of the population inclined to mass murder is small and probably hasn't changed, but population growth means there are thirty-five times more dangerous maniacs walking the planet today than in the ancient world.

Never mind that there are also thirty-five times more good guys.  Good guys don't commit crimes, good news never moves, and bad news spreads like wild fire.

When you add that many potential mass murderers to the extra lethal technology they can carry, it doesn't look good.


The Tomb of Alexander the Great

There's been a lot of news recently about a major tomb discovery in Macedonia.  In fact that tomb's been known of for years, but excavation is underway; the tomb has turned out to be massive and ornate, and it's just the right dating to be immediately post-Alexander the Great.  This has almost inevitably caused people to announce that we've discovered the tomb of Alexander.

So could this be Alexander's grave?

No, not a hope in Hades.

After Alexander died, his Generals fought each other in a super-war for control of the empire.   They were called the Successor Wars, and they weren't much fun.  If you think Texas Chainsaw Massacre Meets Gladiator with a cast of tens of thousands then you wouldn't be far off.  Throughout this brutal affair, whoever had possession of Alexander's dead body got extra victory points.

The major biographer of Alexander from the ancient world was a guy called Arrian.  Arrian -- and every other ancient writer on the subject for that matter -- says that Ptolemy hijacked the body of Alexander while it was on its way elsewhere.  (Yes, I know this is macabre.)

Ptolemy installed the body in Memphis, the capital of Egypt, while a temple and tomb was prepared in the newly-built city of Alexandria.  (Alexandria was, of course, founded by Alexander.)  Ptolemy's son, also called Ptolemy, oversaw the final installation of the corpse during the next generation.

Thus in the second century BC, Alexander is definitely in Alexandria, in a lovely temple in the middle of the city.

Cut to the birth of the Roman Empire.  The history of Dio Cassius says that after Augustus conquered Marc Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt, he was taken to see the tomb of Alexander.  The sarcophagus was opened and Augustus gazed upon Alexander's face.

Augustus, future first emperor of Rome, then got it into his head to kiss a 300 year old corpse.  (Yes, this is kind of creepy.)  Dio Cassius reports that in the process Augustus accidentally broke Alexander's nose.

It's possible that some time in the intervening years someone moved Alexander to Macedon, but if so, then who was Augustus pashing in 30BC?   Furthermore, checking out Alexander's corpse became something of a de rigeur tourist attraction for high ranking Romans.  Strabo and Caligula are both stated to have seen him, still in Alexandria.  The tomb was eventually closed to tourists in the third century AD by Septimus Severus, who apparently had some sense of propiety.

Thus it's impossible that any grave in Macedonia could possibly hold Alexander.  I'm thinking someone digging deep in Alexandria will eventually find it.

  


Book bag FAIL: that was a close call.

I am returned from a fan convention in Washington, a trip to my dear publisher Soho in New York, and a stock signing at the ever-friendly Mysterious Bookshop.  Many wonderful and exciting things happened in the last two weeks, but here I'll mention something that happened at the very end.  

I acquired a few books while I traveled, as you might imagine.  Here is the state of my book bag when I picked it off the carousel at Sydney airport.


If that last little piece of fabric had failed, all the books would have been scattered across three airports and two continents.