75.
After this appeal to the Gods he began military operations.
In the first place, the soldiers1 felled the fruit-trees and surrounded the city with a stockade, that henceforth
no one might get out.
[2]
They then began to raise a mound against it, thinking that with so large an army at
work this would be the speediest way of taking the place.
So they cut timber from Cithaeron and built on either side of the intended mound a
frame of logs placed cross-wise in order that the material might not scatter.
[3]
Thither they carried wood, stones, earth, and anything which would fill up the vacant
space.
They continued raising the mound seventy days and seventy nights without intermission;
the army was divided into relays, and one party worked while the other slept and ate.
[4]
The Lacedaemonian officers who commanded the contingents of the allies stood over them
and kept them at work.
The Plataeans, seeing the mound rising, constructed a wooden frame, which they set upon
the top of their own wall opposite the mound;
[5]
in this they inserted bricks, which they took from the neighboring houses; the wood
served to strengthen and bind the structure together as it increased in height; they
also hung curtains of skins and hides in front; these were designed to protect the
wood-work and the workers, and shield them against blazing arrows.
[6]
The wooden wall rose high, but the mound rose quickly too.
Then the Plataeans had a new device;—they made a hole in that part of the
wall against which the mound pressed and drew in the earth.
1 The siege operations begin: the Peloponnesians raise a mound, which the Plataeans counteract by raising the height of a part of their wall and by drawing away earth from the mound.
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