d children had been sent to
Athens, the only women remaining in the town being about a hundred
slaves, who served as cooks. Around this small place gathered the entire
army of Sparta and her allies, a force against which it seemed as if the
few defenders could not hold out a week. But these faithful few were
brave and resolute, and for a year and more they defied every effort of
their foes.

The story of this siege is of interest as showing how the ancients
assailed a fortified town. Defences which in our times would not stand a
day, in those times took months and years to overcome. The army of
Sparta, defied by the brave garrison, at first took steps to enclose the
town. If the defenders would not let them in, they would not let the
defenders out. They laid waste the cultivated land, cut down the
fruit-trees, and used these to build a strong palisade around the entire
city, with the determination that not a Plataean should escape. This
done, they began to erect a great mound of wood, stones, and earth
against the city wall, forming an inclined plane up which they proposed
to rush and take the city by assault. The sides of this mound were
enclosed by cross-beams of wood, so as to hold its materials in place.

For seventy days and nights the whole army worked busily at this sloping
mound, and at the end of this time it had reached nearly the height of
the wall. But the Plataeans had not been idle while their foes were thus
at work. They raised the height of their old wall at this point by an
additional wall of wood, backed up by brickwork, which they tore down
houses to obtain. In front of this they suspended hides, so as to
prevent fire-bearing arrows from setting the wood on fire. Then they
made a hole through the lower part of the town wall, and through it
pulled the earth from the bottom of the mound, so that the top fell in.

The besiegers now let down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled
reeds, which could not be thus pulled away. Yet their mound continued to
sink, in spite of the new materials they heaped on top, and they could
not tell why. In fact, the Plataeans had dug an underground passage from
within the town, and through this carried away the foundations of the
mound. And thus for more than two months the besiegers built and the
garrison destroyed their works.

Not content with this, the Plataeans built a new portion of wall within
the town, joining the old wall on both sides of the mound, so th