Ismarus

A city on the Thracian coast, allied with the Trojans, sacked by Odysseus’s twelve ships at dawn on the way home from the war. The city fell before the sun was high. The men ransacked it, killed most of the inhabitants, took gold and livestock and women. Odysseus spared the priest of Apollo and his family, and the priest gave him jars of an undiluted wine so strong you would cut it twenty to one with water. That wine would later blind a Cyclops. The mistake at Ismarus was the partying that followed. Odysseus told the men to board. They refused. They danced on open sand with meat on the spits and the blood still drying on their arms, certain they were untouchable. At dawn the hills filled with Cicone reinforcements. Six men from each ship did not make it back aboard. Ismarus is the first lesson of the homeward journey: a victory is only a victory if you leave when it is over.