232 



DISCOVERY 



of the Odyssey, which descrihes Odysseus" visit to the 

 nether world, had clearly visited an oracular shrine 

 of a hero. His description of the ritual with its 

 triple libation of honey mixed with milk, sweet wine 

 and water/ exactly corresponds with what is known 

 to have been the rule in such ceremonies in historical 

 times. Thus, for example, Iphigenia performs the 

 funeral rite : — 



Spirit, thou unknown 

 Who bearest on dark wing.s 

 My brother, my one, my own, 



1 bear drink-offerings 



And the cup that bringeth ease 



Flowing through Earth's deep breast ; 



Milk of the mountain kine. 



The hallowed gleam of wine. 



The toil of murmuring bees ; 



By these shall the dead have rest." 



The living made their cakes and sweetmeats of honey 

 and the varieties produced in different localities were 

 disting'uished by the connoisseur. The honey of Attica 

 was already famous in the time of Solon (594 B.C.) 

 and throughout antiquity it maintained a special repu- 

 tation. Its excellence was attributed in part to the 

 thyme which grew upon Mt. Hymettus, and attempts 

 were even made to produce the same honey elsewhere 

 by transplanting Hymettan thyme. It was thought, 

 too, that the method of the Athenian beekeepers, who 

 took the honey w-ithout smoking out the bees, in this 

 way contributed to the purity of its flavour. 



Honey, in fact, was eaten in all parts of the ancient 

 world, and the peculiarities of the various kinds were 

 well-known. If, therefore, the properties of the 

 honey of a particular district excited surprise as some- 

 thing quite exceptional, we shall probably be right in 

 assuming that it was peculiar to its particular part 

 of the area known to the ancient world. Various 

 kinds of honey were known which were unpleasant 

 to the taste or deleterious in their effects. There 

 was, for example, a Mauretanian honey which was 

 unwholesome, and the Sardinian, thanks to the pro- 

 verbial bitterness of the local variety of apiastnun/ a 

 kind of wild parsley, possessed a bitter after-taste. 

 But the honey produced in the .south-east corner of 

 tlie Black Sea, in the district which lies between 

 Trebizond and Krzerum, stands quite by itself. The 

 honey of Heracleia Pontica further to the west was 

 in certain seasons deleterious, but the symptoms pro- 

 duced in the victim, who rolled upon the ground in 

 an agonised sensation of extreme heat, seem to have 

 differed frotn those caused by the honey of Trebizond. 

 Colchis, further to the north, round the coast of the 



' Homer, Odyssey, XI.. 27. Butcher and Lang are mistaken 

 in translating /if-Xn-p^rifj " mead." 



- Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 156, translated by Gilbert 

 Murray. 



■■■ Vergil. Echijiie, VH.. 41. 



Black Sea, has also fallen under suspicion of produc- 

 ing "maddening" honey. Tournefort quotes some 

 second-hand information to that effect, which I 

 suspect, however, of being inexact. Strabo knew 

 that Colchian honey was bitter, and Evliyi Effendi 

 warned people against eating it, but for a different 

 reason.' So far as my acquaintance with the works 

 of classical authors and of more recent travellers 

 extends, the "maddening" honey, as it was called, 

 is restricted to the Trebizond-Erzerum area. 



Its properties were first made known to the Greek 

 world through the involuntary experiment of 

 Xenophon's Ten Thousand. After the death of the 

 Pretender to the Persian throne, by whom they had 

 been engaged, they had fought their adventurous way 

 from the heart of Mesopotamia through unexplored 

 country and savage peoples to the sea. They had 

 almost reached Trebizond when the adventure of the 

 honey occurred. Those who ate of it were affected 

 according to the quantity consumed. The mildest 

 symptoms were tiiose of intoxication ; those who had 

 eaten a considerable quantity were like madmen, and 

 those who had eaten largely became insensible. None 

 of these died, but recovered consciousness in almost 

 exactly 24 hours, though it was tv\'0 or three days 

 before they were themselves again." 



This maddening honey was naturally discussed in 

 antiquity, and the cause of its properties was 

 attributed to the nature of plants in the district from 

 which the bees collected nectar. It puzzled Pliny 

 that the character of the honey both at Trebizond and 

 at Heracleia varied in different years, and the latter, 

 it was noticed, was peculiarly liable to be poisonous 

 when the spring was abnormally wet. 



Grote, who accuses Azalea Pontica of responsibilty, 

 rightly rejected the scepticism of a German named 

 Koch, who, because he did not himself meet with 

 poisonous honey in Pontus, thought that Xenophon's 

 men must have eaten honey which had gone bad with 

 keeping.' The ancient authors too are confirmed by 

 the experience of a Turkish traveller in the seven- 

 teenth century, who had not read Xenophon. At the 

 fortress of Hassan, in the province of Erzerum. 

 Evliyd remarks, " bread and honey are rather to be 

 suspected, for I myself, poor Evilya, having eaten 



> Strabo, XL, 2, 17, c. 498, Von Hammer, The Travels of 

 Evilya Efendi, 11. , p. 56. " These Abaza people have a strange 

 mode of burying their Begs: they put the body into a 

 wooden coffin, which they nail on to the branches of some high 

 tree and make a hole in the coftin near the head, that the Beg, 

 as they say, may look up to Heaven: bees enter the coffin and 

 make honey, entirely wrapping the body up in it; when the 

 season comes they open the cotfin, take the honey and sell it: 

 much caution, therefore, is required to be used in purchasing 

 the honey of the Abazas." 



- Xenophon, Anabasis, IV., viii., 20 foil. Translation in 

 Dakyns, The Works of Xenophon. 



" Grote, History of Greece. IX., p. 155. 



