"The Boats", or "Scaphism" was a torture method used by the Persians. The punishment was not used commonly, but was reserved for special cases. The name comes from the Greek σκάφη, skáphe, meaning "anything scooped (or hollowed) out". Most of the accounts of the less appealing aspects of the Persians come from Greek sources, so the descriptions of torture methods and horrific events are quite colourful as they were probably intended to be used as propaganda.
From Greek writer Plutarch's Life Of Artaxerxes:
[The king] decreed that Mithridates should be put to death in boats; which execution is after the following manner: Taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other, they lay down in one of them the malefactor that suffers, upon his back; then, covering it with the other, and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of him are left outside, and the rest of his body lies shut up within, they offer him food, and if he refuse to eat it, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes; then, after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey, pouring it not only into his mouth, but all over his face. They then keep his face continually turned towards the sun; and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. And as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do, creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him, his body is consumed. When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures preying upon and, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, at last expired.
Mithridates was a Persian soldier fighting in Artaxerxes II's army. Artaxerxes was the king of Persia, but he had a younger brother named Cyrus who challenged his claim to the throne. In 401 BC, Cyrus met Artaxerxes at the Battle of Cunaxa, and just as he was about to win the battle, he made a mistake.
From Plutarch, again:
Cyrus being made elate with victory, and full of confidence and force, passed through enemy lines, crying out, and that more than once, in the Persian language, "Clear the way, villains, clear the way;" which they indeed did, throwing themselves down at his feet. But his tiara dropped off his head, and a young Persian, by name Mithridates, running by, struck a dart into one of his temples near his eye, not knowing who he was, out of which wound much blood gushed, so that Cyrus, swooning and senseless, fell off his horse.
Artaxerxes immediately claimed that it was he who had slain his younger brother on the battlefield. Mithridates brought his own death upon himself whilst drunk at a banquet some time later:
"Talk you what you please of horse-trappings, and such trifles; I declare to you explicitly that this hand was the death of Cyrus. For I threw not my dart as Artaxerxes did, in vain and to no purpose, but only just missing his eye, and hitting him right on the temple, and piercing him through, I brought him to the ground; and of that wound he died."
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