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Still urging on, in the career of philanthropic invention, he enlarges and heightens his powers of defense and injury. The aries, the scorpio, the balista, and the catapulta, give a horror and sublimity to war, and magnify its glory, by increasing its desolation.
A musket is a more expensive machine than a javelin or a bow and arrows; a cannon or a mortar, than a balista or a catapulta. The powder which is spent in a modern review is lost irrecoverably, and occasions a very considerable expense. The javelins and arrows which were thrown or shot in an ancient one, could easily be picked up again, and were, besides, of very little value.
As their posts were different, so were their methods of attack: the Romans made their approaches by means of covered galleries, applying also the ram to the walls; the king's troops, by throwing in weapons with the balista, catapulta, and every other kind of engine, and stones also of immense weight.
Had my uncle Toby's head been a Savoyard's box, and my father peeping in all the time at one end of it it could not have given him a more distinct conception of the operations of my uncle Toby's imagination, than what he had; so, notwithstanding the catapulta and battering-ram, and his bitter imprecation about them, he was just beginning to triumph
The cannon and the mortar are not only much dearer, but much heavier machines than the balista or catapulta; and require a greater expense, not only to prepare them for the field, but to carry them to it.
The affectionate and endearing manner in which my uncle Toby did these little offices cut my father thro' his reins, for the pain he had just been giving him. May my brains be knock'd out with a battering-ram or a catapulta, I care not which, quoth my father to himself if ever I insult this worthy soul more! We will go on with it then upon the old model, cried my uncle Toby.
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