counterbalanced by the insatiable
desire of plunder.

Antonius[129] determined upon the latter course and ordered the
rampart to be invested. The attack began at a distance with a volley
of stones and darts, with the greater loss to the Flavians, on whom
the enemy's weapons were thrown with advantage from above. Antonius
presently assigned portions of the rampart and the gates to the
legions that by this mode of attack in different quarters, valor and
cowardice might be distinguished, and a spirit of emulation in honor
animate the army. The third and seventh legions took their station
nearest the road to Bedriacum; the seventh and eighth Claudian, a
portion more to the right hand of the rampart; the thirteenth were
carried by their own impetuosity to the gate that looked toward
Brixia.[130] Some delay then took place while they supplied themselves
from the neighboring villages with pickaxes, spades, and hooks, and
scaling-ladders. They then formed a close military shell with their
shields raised above their heads, and under that cover advanced to the
ramparts. The Roman art of war was seen on both sides. The Vitellians
rolled down massy stones, with which, having disjoined and shaken the
shell, they inserted their long poles and spears; till at last, the
whole frame and texture of the shields being dissolved, they strewed
the ground with numbers of the crusht and mangled assailants....

Severe in the extreme was the conflict maintained by the third and
the seventh legions. Antonius in person led on a select body of
auxiliaries to the same quarter. The Vitellians were no longer able to
sustain the shock of men all bent on victory, and seeing their darts
fall on the military shell, and glide off without effect, at last they
rolled down their battering-engine on the heads of the besiegers. For
the moment, it dispersed and overwhelmed the party among which, it
fell; but it also drew after it, in its fall, the battlements and
upper parts of the rampart. An adjoining tower, at the same time,
yielded to the effect of stones which struck it, and left a breach, at
which the seventh legion, in the form of a wedge, endeavored to force
their way, while the third hewed down the gate with axes and swords.
The first man that entered, according to all historians, was Caius
Volusius, a common soldier of the third legion. He gained the summit
of the rampart, and, bearing down all resistance, in the view of all
beckoned with his hand,