Folk following Mithradates’ suggestion? That is unknown, but the ploy certainly would have pleased the Poison King, and it was a great success. Pompey’s advance cohorts stopped to enjoy the treat. Struck dumb and blind, wracked by violent vomiting and diarrhea, they lay paralyzed along the roadside. The Turret-Folk descended with their iron battle-axes. When Pompey arrived on the scene, a black cloud of flies buzzed over a thousand legionnaires sprawled on the road, sticky with honey and blood.1
