History of the Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesians, on perceiving this, rammed down clay in wattles of reed, and threw it into the breach, that it might not be loose, and so carried away like the soil.

Being thus baffled, the Plataeans ceased from this attempt; but having dug a passage under ground from the city, and having guessed their way under the mound, they began again to carry the soil in to them. And for a long time they escaped the observation of the enemy outside; so that though they continued to throw on materials, they were further from finishing it; as their mound was carried away from beneath, and continually sinking down into the vacuum.

Fearing, however, that they might not even by this means be able to hold out, so few in numbers against so many, they adopted the following additional contrivance. They ceased to work at the great building opposite to the mound; but beginning at either end of it, where the wall was of its original height, they built another in the form of a crescent, running inwards into the city; that if the great wall were taken, this might hold out, and their opponents might have to throw up a second mound against it, and as they advanced within, might have double trouble and be more exposed to missiles on both their flanks.

At the same time that they were raising the mound, the Peloponnesians brought engines also to play upon the city; one of which, being brought up close to the wall, shook down a considerable part of the great building, and terrified the Plataeans. Others were advanced against different parts of the wall; but the Plataeans broke them off by throwing nooses around them. They also suspended great beams by long iron chains from the extremity of two levers, which were laid upon the wall, and stretched out beyond it; and having drawn them up at an angle, whenever the engine was going to fall on any point, by loosing the chains and not holding them tight in hand, they let the beam drop; which, falling on it with great impetus, broke off the [*]( Arnold thinks that the battering engine ended in a point, to force its way into the wall, rather than with a thick solid end, merely to batter it; and so that τὸ προέχον τῆς ἐμβολῆς answers exactly to τὸ τρύτανον in a parallel passage quoted by him from Aeneas Tacticus.) head of the battering-ram.

After this, when their engines were of no avail, and the building of the wall was going on in opposition to the mound, the Peloponnesians, thinking it impossible to take the city by their present means of offence, prepared for circumvallating it.

First however they determined to make an attempt upon it by fire, [and see] whether with the help of a favourable wind they could burn the town, as it was not a large one: for they thought of every possible device, if by any means it might be reduced by them without the expense of a siege.

They took therefore faggots of brushwood, and threw them from the mound; at first into the space between it and the wall, and when that had soon been filled by the many hands at work, they piled them up also as far into the town as they could reach from the height; and then lighted the wood by throwing on it fire with sulphur and pitch.

By this means such a flame was raised as no one had ever yet seen produced by the hand of man; [though natural conflagrations might have exceeded it;] for ere now the wood of a mountain forest has been known to take fire of itself, and to emit a flame in consequence, through the mutual attrition of the boughs by high winds.

This fire, however, was a great one, and was within very little of destroying the Plataeans, after they had escaped all their other dangers; for there was a considerable part of the town within which it was not possible to approach; and if a wind had risen to blow upon it, as their enemy hoped, they would not have escaped.

As it was, however, the following occurrence is also said to have favoured them; a heavy rain and thunder-storm came on, and quenched the flame; and so the danger ceased.

When the Peloponnesians had failed in this attempt also, they left behind them a certain part of their force, [having disbanded the rest,] and proceeded to raise a wall of circumvallation round the town, dividing the whole extent amongst the contingents of the different states. There was a ditch, too, both inside and outside of the lines, from which they made their bricks.

All being finished by about the [*]( i. e. its morning rising, nearly coincident with the autumnal equinox.) rising of Arcturus, they left troops to man half the extent of the wall, (the other half being manned by the Boeotians,) and retired with their army, and dispersed to their different cities.

Now the Plataeans had previously carried out of the town to Athens their children, and wives, and oldest men, and the mass of the inhabitants that would be of no service; but the men themselves who were left in the place and stood the siege, amounted to four hundred, with eighty Athenians, and one hundred and ten women to make bread for them.