C. Julius Caesar, Commentaries on the Civil War
William Duncan, Ed.

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Trebonius immediately resolved to repair his loss, in which he found himself warmly seconded by the zeal of the soldiers. They saw the works, which had cost so much labour and toil, destroyed by the perfidy of a people, who made no scruple of violating the most sacred engagements: they saw that their credulity had been abused, and that they were become the jest of their enemies, which grieved and provoked them at the same time. But it was still difficult to determine whence they might be supplied with wood, to repair all these works. There was none in the neighbourhood of Marseilles, the trees having been all cut down for a great way round. They resolved therefore to raise a terrace of a new kind, and such as history no where mentions before that time. They raised two walls of brick, each six feet thick, and distant from one another, nearly the breadth of the former mount. Over these they laid a floor, and to render it firm, besides its being supported on either side, placed pillars underneath between the walls, to bear it up where it was weakest, or had a greater stress of weight to support. There were moreover cross beams, which rested upon niches in the wall; and to render the several floors proof against fire, hurdles were laid over them, which were afterwards covered with clay. The soldiers, thus sheltered over head by the roof, on the right and left by walls, and before by a breast-work, brought the necessary materials without danger, and by the eagerness with which they laboured, soon completed the whole, leaving overtures in convenient places to sally out upon occasion.