Kitap 2
75.4
The Plataeans, seeing the mount to rise, made the frame of a wall with wood which, having placed on the wall of the city in the place where the mount touched, they built it within full of bricks taken from the adjoining houses for that purpose demolished, the timber serving to bind them together that the building might not be weakened by the height.
75.5
The same was also covered with hides and quilts both to keep the timber from shot of wildfire and those that wrought from danger.
75.6
So that the height of the wall was great on one side, and the mount went up as fast on the other. The Plataeans used also this device: they brake a hole in their own wall where the mount joined and drew the earth from it into the city.
76.1
But the Peloponnesians, when they found it out, took clay and therewith daubing hurdles of reeds cast the same into the chink, which mouldering not, as did the earth, they could not draw it away.
76.2
The Plataeans, excluded here, gave over that plot, and digging a secret mine, which they carried under the mount from within the city by conjecture, fetched away the earth again and were a long time undiscovered; so that still casting on, the mount grew still less, the earth being drawn away below and settling over the part where it was voided.
76.3
The Plataeans, nevertheless, fearing that they should not be able even thus to hold out, being few against many, devised this further. They gave over working at the high wall against the mount and, beginning at both ends of it where the wall was low, built another wall in form of a crescent, inward to the city; that if the great wall were taken, this might resist and put the enemy to make another mount, and by coming further in to be at double pains and withal more encompassable with shot.
