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Phoceans victory over Thessalians

The Thessalians and their allies had invaded Phocis with their whole army but had been worsted and roughly handled by the Phocians. When the Phocians were besieged on Parnassus, they had with them the diviner Tellias of Elis; Tellias devised a stratagem for them: he covered six hundred of the bravest Phocians with gypsum, themselves and their armor, and led them to attack the Thessalians by night, bidding them slay whomever they should see not whitened. The Thessalian sentinels were the first to see these men and to flee for fear, supposing falsely that it was something supernatural, and after the sentinels the whole army fled as well. The Phocians made themselves masters of four thousand dead, and their shields, of which they dedicated half at Abae and the rest at Delphi. A tithe of what they won in that fight went to the making of the great statues that stand around the tripod in front of the shrine at Delphi, and there are others like them dedicated at Abae.

This extract is from: Herodotus, The Histories, ed. A. D. Godley, Cambridge. Harvard University Press
Cited Sept. 2002 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains comments & interesting hyperlinks.

Perseus: Herodotus, The Histories (ed. A. D. Godley, 1920)
• http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=...