Full text: Vitruvius: The architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, in ten books

833 
CHAPTER XIX. 
OF MACHINES FOR ATTACK. 
I HAVE said as much as I could on these matters; it now 
remains for me to treat of those things relating to attacks, 
namely, of those machines with which generals take 
and defend cities. The first engine for attack was the 
ram, whose origin is said to have been as follows. The 
Carthaginians encamped in order to besiege Cadiz, and 
having first got possession of one of the towers, they en¬ 
deavoured to demolish it, but having no machines fit for 
the purpose, they took a beam, and suspending it in their 
hands, repeatedly battered the top of the wall with the 
end of it, and having first thrown down the upper courses, 
by degrees they destroyed the whole fortress. After that, 
a certain workman of Tyre, of the name of Pephasmenos, 
turning his attention to the subject, fixed up a pole and 
suspended a cross piece therefrom after the method of a 
steelyard, and thus swinging it backwards and forwards, 
levelled with heavy blows the walls of Cadiz. Cetras the 
Chalcedonian, was the first who added a base to it of tim- 
ber moveable on wheels, and covered it with a roof on up- 
right and cross pieces: on this he suspended the ram, co¬ 
vering it with bulls' hides, so that those who were employed 
therein in battering the walls might be secure from dan¬ 
ger. And inasmuch as the machine moved but slowly, 
they called it the tortoise of the ram. Such was the 
origin of this species of machines. But afterwards, 
when Philip, the son of Amintas, besieged Byzantium, 
Polydus the Thessalian used it in many and simple forms,
	        
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