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They also obtain possession of a rising ground; and having collected thither catapultae and ballistae, so that they might have a fort in the city itself, commanding it like a citadel, they surround it with a wall: and the Saguntines raise an inner wall before the part of the city which was not yet taken.
The North Briton, who was as great a pedant as the physician, having studied fortification, and made himself master of Caesar's Commentaries and Polybius, with the observations of Folard, affirmed, that all the methods of besieging practised by the ancients would be utterly ineffectual against such a plan as that of the citadel of Lisle; and began to compare the vineae, aggeres, arietes, scorpiones, and catapultae of the Romans, with the trenches, mines, batteries, and mortars used in the present art of war.
So the reader of Ctesibius or Archimedes and the other writers of treatises of the same class will not be able to appreciate them unless he has been trained in these subjects by the philosophers. Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae, catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key.
An immense quantity of military stores was also taken; one hundred and twenty catapultae of the larger size, two hundred and eighty-one of the smaller; twenty-three ballistae of the larger size, fifty-two of the smaller; an immense number of scorpions of the larger and smaller size, and also of arms and missile weapons; and seventy-four military standards.
When being brought up it had cleared the walls of their defenders by means of the catapultae and ballistae ranged through all its stories, then Hannibal, thinking it a favourable opportunity, sends about five hundred Africans with pickaxes to undermine the wall: nor was the work difficult, since the unhewn stones were not fastened with lime, but filled in their interstices with clay, after the manner of ancient building.
He would tell my uncle Toby of the Catapultae of the Syrians, which threw such monstrous stones so many hundred feet, and shook the strongest bulwarks from their very foundation: he would go on and describe the wonderful mechanism of the Ballista which Marcellinus makes so much rout about! the terrible effects of the Pyraboli, which cast fire; the danger of the Terebra and Scorpio, which cast javelins.
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