taeans,
the other against any attack on the outside from Athens, about sixteen
feet apart. The intermediate space of sixteen feet was occupied by huts
portioned out among the soldiers on guard, and built in one block, so as
to give the appearance of a single thick wall with battlements on either
side. At intervals of every ten battlements were towers of considerable
size, and the same breadth as the wall, reaching right across from its
inner to its outer face, with no means of passing except through the
middle. Accordingly on stormy and wet nights the battlements were
deserted, and guard kept from the towers, which were not far apart and
roofed in above.

Such being the structure of the wall by which the Plataeans were
blockaded, when their preparations were completed, they waited for a
stormy night of wind and rain and without any moon, and then set out,
guided by the authors of the enterprise. Crossing first the ditch that
ran round the town, they next gained the wall of the enemy unperceived
by the sentinels, who did not see them in the darkness, or hear them,
as the wind drowned with its roar the noise of their approach; besides
which they kept a good way off from each other, that they might not be
betrayed by the clash of their weapons. They were also lightly equipped,
and had only the left foot shod to preserve them from slipping in the
mire. They came up to the battlements at one of the intermediate spaces
where they knew them to be unguarded: those who carried the ladders went
first and planted them; next twelve light-armed soldiers with only a
dagger and a breastplate mounted, led by Ammias, son of Coroebus, who
was the first on the wall; his followers getting up after him and going
six to each of the towers. After these came another party of light
troops armed with spears, whose shields, that they might advance the
easier, were carried by men behind, who were to hand them to them when
they found themselves in presence of the enemy. After a good many had
mounted they were discovered by the sentinels in the towers, by the
noise made by a tile which was knocked down by one of the Plataeans as
he was laying hold of the battlements. The alarm was instantly given,
and the troops rushed to the wall, not knowing the nature of the danger,
owing to the dark night and stormy weather; the Plataeans in the town
having also chosen that moment to make a sortie against the wall of the
Peloponnesians upon the side opposite to