eputation of
their lives. After this neither wounds nor bloodshed could stay the
Flavian troops. They demolished the rampart, shook the gates, climbed
up on each other's shoulders, or over the re-formed 'tortoise', and
snatched away the enemy's weapons or caught hold of them by the arms.
Thus the wounded and unwounded, the half-dead and the dying, all came
rolling down and perished together by every imaginable kind of death.

The fight raged thickest round the Third and Seventh legions, and 29
the general, Antonius, came up with a picked band of auxiliaries to
support their assault. The Vitellians, finding themselves unable to
resist the attack of troops thus stubbornly vying with each other, and
seeing their missiles all glide off the shelter of shields, at last
sent their engine of war crashing down upon their heads. For the
moment it scattered and crushed beneath it the men on whom it fell,
but it dragged with it some of the battlements and the top of the
rampart. At the same moment one of the towers on the rampart gave way
under a shower of stones. While the men of the Seventh struggled up to
the breach in close column,[79] the Third hewed down the gate with
hatchets and swords. All the authorities[80] agree that Caius Volusius
of the Third legion was the first man in. Emerging on the top of the
rampart, he hurled down those who barred his path, and from this
conspicuous position waved his hand and shouted that the camp was
taken. The others poured through, while the Vitellians in panic flung
themselves down from the rampart, and the whole space between the camp
and the walls became a seething scene of carnage.

Here, again, was a new type of task for the Flavians. Here were 30
high walls, stone battlements, iron-barred gates, and soldiers hurling
javelins. The citizens of Cremona were numerous and devoted to the
cause of Vitellius, and half Italy had gathered there for the Fair
which fell just at that time. Their numbers were a help to the
defenders, but the prospect of plundering them offered an incentive to
their assailants. Antonius ordered his men to bring fire and apply it
to the most beautiful of the buildings outside the walls, hoping that
the loss of their property might induce the citizens to turn traitor.
The houses that stood nearest to the walls and overtopped them he
crowded with his bravest troops, who dislodged the defenders with
showers of beams and tiles and flaming torches. Meanwhil