Poisoned bread, poisoned wells, poisoned water

It would happen without suspicion if someone, being careless, worked the carrying toward an easy raid of the enemies and a wished-for snatching of the things brought to them, or if someone, feigning a serious flight, yielded to those coming on of the camp fortified with such foods. These do not bring a one-day death, nor do they kill the user at once. A plague-art overtakes this man and the one who did not eat; it is mixed into all and passes to the messmate. Into a house, a city, an army, a nation the plot migrates. Such a fate an Erinys procures for them. These are just dinners of penalties against barbarians, disease pouring upon all and an inexorable disaster overtaking the enemies.

If we fear we may use such a preparation in vain, either because they do not use it from suspicion, or because they have learned this from deserters, then, having feasted them, let us release either the criminals or the captives beside them; those who have kept company with them will take plague at once. I send them a plotting kindness. Let us likewise give them to drink such a loving-cup.

Three kinds of animals which lie in the second pentagon, toward the signs of the highest of the high — a turned-back gamma and an upright gamma: chop these so that all become ichor, and boiling them with very much water until all the fat of the boiled is consumed, pour into the enemies' watering-place. The bodies of those who have drunk will swell, themselves and the pack-animals; then a swelling with pain will stand upon them, and a man seeing himself become another from another, not recognizing the present form, slow both for flight and for an end, waiting the neighboring death, will pray for the speed of a warlike onset, that he may cease, both punished by the tension of inflammation and hated by himself because of the ugliness, the panoply that was inflated on the former body not holding the man now, so as to take from him even the pretense of standing in the arms.

Harm the waters also otherwise: fill the wells with dung and stones; and if the water is abundant, by fish-oil poured into them and by sea-purple, which for a long time make all water undrinkable. A greater standing of waters, or a lake, the myrtle-spurge thrown in will damage. Thus we shall first hinder the enemies by the drink. Let no one think the barbarians of the east unlearned in these things.