The Sybarite horses that danced to the pipe

The horse-frightener. The story is that the Sybarites once drove luxury to this point: they would lead the horses into the symposium at dinner. The horses, having heard an aulos-tune, stand up on the two hind feet and dance with the front as if gesturing with the hands. An aulos-player who had been insulted deserted to the Crotoniates, freshly beaten in a horse-fight. He promised to benefit the common thing to the greatest degree, for he would hand over the whole Sybarite horse-force captive. The Crotoniates trusted him and allowed him to general. He gathered the city's aulos-players, showed the tune, and when it was time passed the word for the sally upon the enemies.

When the Sybarites came on with the whole people, snorting quite with the surplus of horse, and the phalanxes mixed with one another, under one signal all piped. The horses, having heard the accustomed sound as they had been taught at home, shook off the riders and all danced. Then the horsemen were caught lying, and the horses were taken dancing, the accustomed tunes having set them up.

Others also, being about to fight, pray — and they also sacrifice, having stood in contest — to Taraxippos Poseidon. We too found a drug quicker than prayer, better than all you might have, whose form has been inscribed at the end in the eighth pentagon, over which are set the musical notes of the musical note parhypate n inverted sigmaan inverted sigma. It is put into pus-extractors and in the array is given to light men to carry, so that they may stand easily under the press of the front-fighters.

Those then come on having trusted in strength and speed and iron. Whether they happen to be cataphracts, or equipped otherwise, they hurry into the same danger. For when the charge into the infantry has happened, the front-ranked bear the onset by the fence of the shields, and those holding the pus-extractors squeeze the drug into the horses' breaths (the juice is terrible even to men for harm). When the horses receive the smell of the evil they go mad and snort and stand up in haste, as if they had feared the breath from the earth, and they leap upright. The riders fall from the horses to the ground, ready for capture and for slaughter together, fettered by their own breastplates against escaping, either trampled or struck.