# CHAPTER 32 — In How Many Ways the Romans Took Towns

Since all Romans were dedicated to war, they always waged it with every advantage, both with respect to expenses and with respect to every other thing. This gave rise to the fact that they avoided taking towns by siege, because they thought that this method involved far more expense and inconvenience than the benefit they could derive from the acquisition. For this reason, they believed that it was better and more useful to subjugate cities by any other means than by laying siege to them, with the result that in so many wars and over so many years, there are extremely few examples of sieges that they carried out. The methods with which they took cities were, therefore, either by assault or surrender. Assault was either by force and open violence or by force mixed with fraud. Open violence was either when they conducted an attack without battering the walls, which they called ‘putting a crown around the city’, * because they surrounded the city with the entire army and attacked it from all sides (and they were often successful in taking a city in a single assault, even though it was very large, as when Scipio took New Carthage in Spain); * or when this attack was not enough and they turned to breaking the walls down with battering-rams and other machines of war, to digging a tunnel through which they entered the city (the way in which they captured the city of Veii), to constructing wooden towers so that they were level with those who defended the city walls, or to putting up earthen embankments supported by the outside walls in order to reach the height of the walls above them. In the first instance, that of being attacked from all sides, the men defending the city against such assaults were subject to more immediate danger and had more uncertain remedies, because they required numerous defenders in all positions, but their troops were not so numerous that they could provide men for all positions or for replacements, or if they could, they did not all possess the same courage to resist, and if the battle were to shift in one direction, they would all be lost. On that account, as I have said, this method often met with happy success. But when it did not succeed at first, the Romans did not often make another attempt, for it was a method that was very dangerous to the army, since by stretching itself over so much space, it remained totally vulnerable to any sortie that those inside the walls might have made, and it also disorganized the troops and left them fatigued; still, on a single occasion and as a surprise measure, the Romans might use this method. With respect to destroying the city walls, those inside would oppose this method with the same kind of fortifications as are used today. To resist against tunnels they would dig a counter-tunnel, and they would, in this way, oppose the enemy both with arms and other devices, among which was this one: they would fill large containers with feathers in which they lit a fire, and once they were aflame they placed them in the tunnel so that, with the smoke and the smell, they blocked the entrance against the enemy. If they were attacked with towers, they made every attempt to destroy them with fire. With respect to the earthen embankments, they would break up the wall which supported the embankment at its base, pulling into the city the earth that those outside the walls were piling up, so that as earth was put outside and taken away inside, the embankment did not grow.

These methods of capturing cities could not be employed over a long period of time, and it was necessary either to strike camp or to seek through other means to win the war (as Scipio did when, after invading Africa and having attacked Utica without succeeding in taking it, he struck camp and sought to destroy the Carthaginian armies); or to resort to a siege, as the Romans did at Veii, Capua, Carthage, and Jerusalem and other similar cities that they took by means of a siege. With respect to taking cities by clandestine violence, this occurs as it did at Paleopolis, which the Romans occupied by agreement with those inside the city. This kind of attack has been attempted many times, by the Romans and by others, and it has met with success on few occasions; the reason is that every small obstacle breaks up the plan, and obstacles arise easily, because the conspiracy is discovered before the plot is carried out, and it may be discovered without much difficulty, both because of the infidelity of the people with whom you are conspiring and because of the difficulty of putting the plan into action, since you have to come to an agreement with your enemies and with people with whom it is not permissible to speak except under some pretext. But if the conspiracy is not discovered during the planning, a thousand problems then arise in putting it into action, because either you arrive before the appointed time or you arrive afterwards, which spoils everything, or if an accidental noise is raised, as with the geese on the Capitol, or if normal routine is broken, the slightest error and the smallest mistake ruin the whole enterprise. To this must be added the shadows of the night, which cause even more fear in those who participate in such dangerous affairs. And since the majority of men who undertake such enterprises are inexperienced in the lay of the land or in the places where they are led, they are confused, they grow fearful, and they become unsettled at the least unforeseen incident, and every deceptive appearance is sufficient to make them take flight. Nor has anybody ever been more fortunate in these fraudulent and nighttime expeditions than Aratus of Sicyon, * who, as valiant as he was in these, was something of a coward in open operations in daylight; it is necessary to conclude that this was because he had some special hidden talent rather than because such undertakings are naturally more successful. Of these methods, therefore, many are tried, few are actually tested, and very few succeed.

With respect to taking cities by surrender, either they give themselves up voluntarily or they are taken by force. The will to give up voluntarily arises either from some external necessity that constrains them to take refuge under your protection, as did Capua with the Romans, or from a desire to be well governed, being attracted by the good government that such a prince maintains in those who have voluntarily placed themselves in his arms, as the Rhodians, the Massilienses, and other similar cities did when they gave themselves up to the Roman people. With respect to forced surrender, either such force originates in a lengthy siege, as was stated above, or it comes from continual oppression through raids, pillaging, and other bad treatment, which cities may wish to avoid by surrendering. Of all these methods mentioned, the Romans employed this last one more than any other, and they spent more than 450 years wearing down their neighbours with routs and raids and increasing their reputation among them by means of treaties, as we have discussed on many other occasions. They always relied upon this particular method, even though they tried all of them, but in other methods they found elements that were either dangerous or useless. In a siege, there are the length of time and the cost; in an attack, doubt and danger; in conspiracies, uncertainty. They saw that they could acquire a kingdom in a single day by defeating an army, and that they wasted many years in taking a stubborn city by siege.