at if
the besiegers should complete their mound and rush up it in assault,
they would find a new wall staring them in the face, and all their labor
lost.

This was not all that was done. Battering engines were used against the
walls to break them down. These the defenders caught by long ropes,
pulling the heads of the engines upward or sideways. They also fixed
heavy wooden beams in such a manner that when the head of an engine came
near the wall they could drop a beam suddenly upon it, and break off its
projecting beak.

In these rude ways the attack and defence went on, until three months
had passed, and Archidamus and his army found themselves where they had
begun, and the garrison still safe and defiant. The besiegers next tried
to destroy the town by fire. From the top of the mound they hurled
fagots as far as they could within the walls. They then threw in pitch
and other quick-burning material, and finally set the whole on fire. In
a brief time the flames burst out hotly, and burnt with so fierce a
conflagration that the whole town was in imminent danger of destruction.
Nothing could have saved it had the wind favored the flames. There is a
story also that a thunder-storm came up to extinguish the fire,--but
such opportune rains seem somewhat too common in ancient history. As it
was, part of the town was destroyed, but the most of it remained, and
the brave inmates continued defiant of their foes.

Archidamus was almost in despair. Was this small town, with its few
hundred men, to defy and defeat his large army? He had tried the various
ancient ways of attack in vain. The Spartans, with all their prowess in
the field, lacked skill in the assault of walled towns, and were rarely
successful in the art of siege. The Plataeans had proved more than their
match, and there only remained to be tried the wearisome and costly
process of blockade and famine.

Determined that Plataea should not escape, this plan was in the end
adopted, and a wall built round the entire city, to prevent escape or
the entrance of aid from without. In fact, two walls were built, sixteen
feet apart, and these were covered in on top, so that they looked like
one very thick wall. There were also two ditches, from which the bricks
of the wall had been dug, one on the inside, and one without to prevent
relief by a foreign force. The covered space within the walls served as
quarters for the troops left on guard, its top as a convenient place for