Xenophon, Hellenica
Carleton L. Brownson, Ed.

[8] When, however, the citizens gained possession of some of the towers on this side and on that, they closed in desperate battle with those who had¹ mounted upon their walls. And the enemy, as they were forced back by them — by their courage as well as by their fighting — were being crowded together into an ever smaller space. At this critical moment the Arcadians and Argives were circling around the city and beginning to dig through the wall of the Acropolis from its upper side;² and as for the citizens within, some were dealing blows upon the people on the wall, others upon those who were still climbing up from the outside and were on the ladders, and still others were fighting against those among the enemy who had mounted upon the towers; they also found fire in the tents and began to set the towers ablaze from below, bringing up some sheaves which chanced to have been harvested on the Acropolis itself. Then the people upon the towers, in fear of the flames, jumped off one after another, while those upon the walls, under the blows of their human adversaries, kept falling off.