Aratus

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. XI. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1926.

But as the first men were mounting the ladders, the officer who was to set the morning-watch began making his rounds with a bell, and there were many lights and the noise of the sentries coming up.[*](The sentries who had formed the night-watch came up at the sound of the bell, to be inspected, and then relieved by the morning-watch.) The invaders, however, crouched down just where they were on the ladders, and so escaped the notice of this party without any trouble; but since another watch was coming up to meet the first, they incurred the greatest danger.

However, they escaped the notice of this guard also as it passed by, and then the leaders, Mnasitheus and Ecdelus, at once mounted to the top, and after occupying the approaches to the wall on either side, sent Technon to Aratus, urging him to hasten up.

Now it was no great distance from the garden to the wall, and to the tower, in which a huge dog was on the watch, a hunter. The dog himself did not notice their approach, either because he was naturally sluggish, or because during the day he had become tired out. But when the gardener’s whelps challenged him from below, he began to growl in response, faintly and indistinctly at first, then bayed out more loudly as they passed by.