In How Many Ways the Romans Occupied Towns

The Romans being very often at war, they always did so with every advantage, both as to expense and as to every other thing that it required. From this arose the fact that they guarded against the taking of towns by siege, as they judged this method to be of such an expense and so much trouble that it surpassed by far any usefulness that they could draw from the acquisition: and because of this they thought that it would be better and more useful to subjugate a town by any other means than besieging it: whence there are very few examples of sieges made by them in so many wars and in so many years. Their mode of taking Cities, therefore, was either by assault or by voluntary surrender. The capture by assault was either by force or by open violence, or by force mixed with fraud: the open violence was either by assault without piercing the walls (which they called attacking the city in crown fashion) because they surrounded the City with the entire army, as when Scipio took New Carthage in Spain; or if this assault was not enough they addressed themselves to breeching the walls with rams or with other machines of war of theirs; or they made a mine and by means of it entered the City, by which method they took the City from the Veienti: or in order to be at the same level with those who defended the walls, they made towers of wood: or they made embankments of earth placed against the outside of the walls in order to come to a height above them. In the first case those who were defending the towns against these assaults were exposed to the greatest peril quickly from being assaulted on all sides and had the greatest doubts of being able to remedy this, because they needed to have many defenders in every place, [and] those they had were not numerous enough to be able to substitute for or relieve those in every place, or if they were able to do so, they were not all of equal courage to resist; and if the fight was lost on any one side, all the rest were lost. It happened, therefore, (as I have said) that this mode [of assault] many times was a happy success. But if it did not succeed at the first [try], they did not repeat it much, as it was a dangerous method for the army, for defending themselves over so much space, everything was left weak so as to be unable to resist a sortie that those inside might make, and also it would fatigue the soldiers and cause disorder: so that they attempted this method only one time and by surprise. As to the breaking down of walls, it was opposed as in the present time by repairs; and to resist the mines they made counter mines, and through which they opposed the enemy either with arms or other means, among which was this that they filled barrels with feathers which they set on fire while burning they put them into the mine, so that the smoke and the smell impeded the entrance to the enemy: and if they assaulted them with towers, they endeavored to ruin them by fire. And as to earth embankments, they broke the wall down where the embankment leaned against it, drawing inside the earth which those outside were heaping, so that placing earth outside and taking it away from inside, the embankment did not grow. These means of attack cannot be attempted for long, and [if not successful] the siege must be abandoned and other means sought to win the war, as did Scipio, when he entered Attica, having assaulted Utica and not succeeding in taking it, he betook himself from t............