e of which was brought up
upon the mound against the great building and shook down a good piece of
it, to the no small alarm of the Plataeans. Others were advanced
against different parts of the wall but were lassoed and broken by the
Plataeans; who also hung up great beams by long iron chains from either
extremity of two poles laid on the wall and projecting over it, and drew
them up at an angle whenever any point was threatened by the engine,
and loosing their hold let the beam go with its chains slack, so that it
fell with a run and snapped off the nose of the battering ram.

After this the Peloponnesians, finding that their engines effected
nothing, and that their mound was met by the counterwork, concluded that
their present means of offence were unequal to the taking of the city,
and prepared for its circumvallation. First, however, they determined to
try the effects of fire and see whether they could not, with the help of
a wind, burn the town, as it was not a large one; indeed they thought of
every possible expedient by which the place might be reduced without the
expense of a blockade. They accordingly brought faggots of brushwood and
threw them from the mound, first into the space between it and the wall;
and this soon becoming full from the number of hands at work, they next
heaped the faggots up as far into the town as they could reach from the
top, and then lighted the wood by setting fire to it with sulphur and
pitch. The consequence was a fire greater than any one had ever yet seen
produced by human agency, though it could not of course be compared to
the spontaneous conflagrations sometimes known to occur through the wind
rubbing the branches of a mountain forest together. And this fire was
not only remarkable for its magnitude, but was also, at the end of so
many perils, within an ace of proving fatal to the Plataeans; a great
part of the town became entirely inaccessible, and had a wind blown upon
it, in accordance with the hopes of the enemy, nothing could have saved
them. As it was, there is also a story of heavy rain and thunder having
come on by which the fire was put out and the danger averted.

Failing in this last attempt the Peloponnesians left a portion of
their forces on the spot, dismissing the rest, and built a wall of
circumvallation round the town, dividing the ground among the various
cities present; a ditch being made within and without the lines, from
which they got their bricks. All b