Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

For seventy days and nights the whole army worked busily at this sloping mound, and at the end of this time it had reached nearly the height of the wall. But the Platæans had not been idle while their foes were thus at work. They raised the height of their old wall at this point by an additional wall of wood, backed up by brickwork, which they tore down houses to obtain. In front of this they suspended hides, so as to prevent fire-bearing arrows from setting the wood on fire. Then they made a hole through the lower part of the town wall, and through it pulled the earth from the bottom of the mound, so that the top fell in.

The besiegers now let down quantities of stiff clay rolled up in wattled reeds, which could not be thus pulled away. Yet their mound continued to sink, in spite of the new materials they heaped on top, and they could not tell why. In fact, the Platæans had dug an underground passage from within the town, and through this carried away the foundations of the mound. And thus for more than two months the besiegers built and the garrison destroyed their works.

Not content with this, the Platæans built a new portion of wall within the town, joining the old wall on both sides of the mound, so that if the besiegers should complete their mound and rush up it in assault, they would find a new wall staring them in the face, and all their labor lost.

This was not all that was done. Battering engines were used against the walls to break them down. These the defenders caught by long ropes, pulling the heads of the engines upward or sideways. They also fixed heavy wooden beams in such a manner that when the head of an engine came near the wall they could drop a beam suddenly upon it, and break off its projecting beak.

In these rude ways the attack and defence went on, until three months had passed, and Archidamus and his army found themselves where they had begun, and the garrison still safe and defiant. The besiegers next tried to destroy the town by fire. From the top of the mound they hurled fagots as far as they could within the walls. They then threw in pitch and other quick-burning material, and finally set the whole on fire. In a brief time the flames burst out hotly, and burnt with so fierce a conflagration that the whole town was in imminent danger of destruction. Nothing could have saved it had the wind favored the flames. There is a story also that a thunder-storm came up to extinguish the fire,—but such opportune rains seem somewhat too common in ancient history. As it was, part of the town was destroyed, but the most of it remained, and the brave inmates continued defiant of their foes.

Archidamus was almost in despair. Was this small town, with its few hundred men, to defy and defeat his large army? He had tried the various ancient ways of attack in vain. The Spartans, with all their prowess in the field, lacked skill in the assault of walled towns, and were rarely successful in the art of siege. The Platæans had proved more than their match, and there only remained to be tried the wearisome and costly process of blockade and famine.

Determined that Platæa should not escape, this plan was in the end adopted, and a wall built round the entire city, to prevent escape or the entrance of aid from without. In fact, two walls were built, sixteen feet apart, and these were covered in on top, so that they looked like one very thick wall. There were also two ditches, from which the bricks of the wall had been dug, one on the inside, and one without to prevent relief by a foreign force. The covered space within the walls served as quarters for the troops left on guard, its top as a convenient place for sentry duty. This done, the main army marched away. It needed no great host to keep the few Platæans within their walls until they should consume all their food and yield to famine, a slower but more irresistible foe than all the Lacedæmonian power.

Fortunately for the besieged, they were well provisioned, and for more than a year remained in peace within their city, not attacked by their foes and receiving no aid from friends. Besides the eighty Athenians within the walls no help came to the Platæans during the long siege. At length provisions began to fail. It was evident that they must die like rats in a cage, surrender to their foes, or make a desperate break for freedom.

The last expedient was proposed by their general. It was daring, and seemed desperate, to seek to escape over the blockading wall with its armed guards. So desperate did it appear that half the garrison feared to attempt it, deeming that it would end in certain death. The other half, more than two hundred in number, decided that it was better to dare death in the field than to meet death in the streets.