ying towns, and even great towns, at a first
onset, as when Scipio took new Carthage in Spain. But when they failed
to carry a town by storm, they set themselves to breach the walls with
battering rams and other warlike engines; or they dug mines so as to
obtain an entrance within the walls, this being the method followed in
taking Veii; or else, to be on a level with the defenders, they erected
towers of timber or threw up mounds of earth against the outside of the
walls so as to reach the top.

Of these methods of attack, the first, wherein the city was entirely
surrounded, exposed the defenders to more sudden perils and left them
more doubtful remedies. For while it was necessary for them to have a
sufficient force at all points, it might happen that the forces at
their disposal were not numerous enough to be everywhere at once, or to
relieve one another. Or if their numbers were sufficient, they might not
all be equally resolute in standing their ground, and their failure at
any one point involved a general defeat. Consequently, as I have said,
this method of attack was often successful. But when it did not succeed
at the first, it was rarely renewed, being a method dangerous to the
attacking army, which having to secure itself along an extended line,
was left everywhere too weak to resist a sally made from the town; nay,
of itself, was apt to fall into confusion and disorder. This method of
attack, therefore, could be attempted once only and by way of surprise.

Against breaches in the walls the defence was, as at the present day, to
throw up new works; while mines were met by counter-mines, in which the
enemy were either withstood at the point of the sword, or baffled by
some other warlike contrivance; as by filling casks with feathers,
which, being set on fire and placed in the mine, choked out the
assailants by their smoke and stench. Where towers were employed for the
attack, the defenders sought to destroy them with fire; and where mounds
of earth were thrown up against the walls, they would dig holes at the
base of the wall against which the mound rested, and carry off the earth
which the enemy were heaping up; which, being removed from within as
fast as it was thrown up from without, the mound made no progress.

None of these methods of attack can long be persisted in and the
assailant, if unsuccessful, must either strike his camp and seek victory
in some other direction, as Scipio did when he invaded Afric