Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

However, because the enemy’s ballistae, mounted as they were upon iron-clad towers, were effective from their higher place against those lower down, on account of their different position they had a different result and caused terrible carnage on our side; and when evening was already coming on and both sides rested, the greater part of the night was spent in trying to devise a remedy for this awful slaughter.

And at last, after turning over many plans, we resolved upon a plan which speedy action made the safer, namely, to oppose four scorpions[*](The scorpion was an engine for hurling stones, also called onager, wild ass. It is described in xxiii. 4, 4 ff.) to those same ballistae; but while they were being moved exactly opposite and cautiously put in place (an act calling for the greatest skill) the most sorrowful of days dawned upon us, showing as it did formidable bands of Persians along with troops of elephants, than whose noise and huge bodies the human mind can conceive nothing more terrible.

And while we were hard pressed on every side by weight of armed men, siege-works, and monsters, round stones hurled at intervals from the battlements by the iron arms of our scorpions shattered

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the joints of the towers, and threw down the ballistae and those who worked them in such headlong fashion, that some perished[*](That is, by the fall from the high towers.) without injury from wounds, others were crushed to death by the great weight of debris. The elephants, too, were driven back with great violence, for they were surrounded by firebrands thrown at them from every side, and as soon as these touched their bodies, they turned tail and their drivers were unable to control them. But though after that the siege-works were burned up, there was no cessation from strife.