In reply to my last post, Munzly pointed out that the Yew is extremely poisonous. The Ancient Greeks recognised this, and both poison and arrows were deeply intertwined in the ancient Greek language itself. The word for poison is toxicon, derived from toxon, meaning ‘arrow’. The Greek toxikon pharmakon means “arrow poison”. Clearly the yew provided a deadly poison used to coat arrow heads.

This knowledge was passed on to the Romans eventually. In Latin the word for poison was toxica which derived from taxus meaning ‘yew’. Artemis (the Greek equivalent of the Roman Diana) was honoured in a shrine situated in a yew grove probably because she dipped her arrows in yew to make them poisonous.

In the ancient world Scythian mercenaries were famous archers who, according to Pliny the Elder, smeared their arrows in yew sap to make them poisonous.

Here is a picture of a Scythian archer :
scythian archer