[The following takes place during Gaius Marius’ campaign against an alliance of Germanic tribes that threatened Rome during the earlier part of his military career. Specifically, it details the state of the battlefield long after the Germans slaughtered the routed tribal forces.]
They say, however, that the inhabitants of Massilia [near the site of the battle] made fences round their vineyards with the bones, and that the ground, enriched by the moisture of the putrefied bodies (soaked with the rain of the following winter), yielded at the season a prodigious crop, and fully justified Archilochus, who said, that the fallows thus are fattened.
Source:
Plutarch, John Dryden, and Arthur Hugh Clough. "Caius Marius." Plutarch's Lives. New York: Modern Library, 2001. 563. Print.
Further Reading:
This is the kind of history that should be taught in school.