every article opens with the greek army getting wrecked by honey ~2400 years ago like its a settled fact with footnotes. the xenophon bit is real-ish — soldiers ate local honey, got sick, vomiting, couldnt stand, recovered in a day or so. thats roughly what the account says. what gets bolted on top is the problem. mass deaths, weaponised honey traps, the lot. half of that is internet telephone, not the source
the actual text is pretty mild. they got ill, slept it off, were fine. the "hundreds dead" version is later embellishment getting copy-pasted as if it's in the original
every retelling adds one more dramatic detail. give it another decade and the honey will have personally written the battle plan
worth being precise. there are two separate ancient mentions that get blended into one super-story, and the more lurid framing comes from much later authors. if you're quoting it as fact, at least say which source
my real worry is different. people use the old story as proof — "it is famous since ancient time, so it is safe and tested". this is backwards. an old anecdote is not a safety record. tradition tells you it exists and matters to people, it does not tell you what is in your jar today