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Then whoever was born a poet became an architect. Genius, scattered in the masses, repressed in every quarter under feudalism as under a testudo of brazen bucklers, finding no issue except in the direction of architecture, gushed forth through that art, and its Iliads assumed the form of cathedrals. All other arts obeyed, and placed themselves under the discipline of architecture.
Then we have the Ram, cancer testudo, that battereth; next we have the Tower or Beffroi that goeth on wheels yonder you shall see them a-building. And these towers, moving forward against your city, shall o'ertop the walls and from them archers and cross-bowmen may shoot into your town what time their comrades fill up and dam your moat until the tower may come close unto your walls.
I had to be content with the humiliating substitution of a long, foolish step-dance by two insignificant dancers, which was ended by a company of soldiers marching on, bearing their shields on high so as to form a roof and remind the audience of the Roman testudo; then the ballet-master with his assistant, in flesh-coloured tights, leaped on to the shields and turned somersaults, a proceeding which they thought was reminiscent of the gladiatorial games.
Ladders were planted, and while some of the constables, under the protection of a shield covered with zinc, a sort of Roman testudo, worked at removing the earthern ramparts, others nimbly climbed to the roof and began to break in from above.
"But there's only one crib that we could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken ex itinere. It's a case for the testudo and all the rest of it.
One day when they fell into an ambush and were struck with fast-flying arrows, they suddenly made by joining shields the testudo, and rested their left knees on the ground.
In its basic idea it was the Roman testudo, described by Julius Cæsar in the Gallic Commentaries. The phalanx of marching men were protected from arrows, darts, and ordinary missiles by a continuous covering formed of their ox-hide shields, the latter being held horizontally above the head and interlocked.
The city is not represented as taken, yet sieges are often sculptured on these walls, and the Egyptian army is always supplied with scaling-ladders and the testudo. And what was this city? Was it Babylon? Was it Nineveh? How wonderful is it at this remote period, to read for the first time, the Gazettes of the Pharaohs!
They themselves rushed out of the woods to fight here and there, and prevented our men from entering their fortifications. But the soldiers of the seventh legion, having formed a testudo and thrown up a rampart against the fortification, took the place and drove them out of the woods, receiving only a few wounds.
With the Testudo elegans of India, it is said "that the combats of the males may be heard at some distance, from the noise they produce in butting against each other." Dr. The sexes apparently do not differ in colour; nor do I know that the males fight together, though this is probable, for some kinds make a prodigious display before the females.
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