# CHAPTER XXXII.—_In how many Ways the Romans gained Possession of Towns._

Turning their thoughts wholly to arms, the Romans always conducted
their military enterprises in the most advantageous way, both as to
cost and every other circumstance of war. For which reason they avoided
attempting towns by siege, judging the expense and inconvenience of
this method of carrying on war greatly to outweigh any advantage to be
gained by it. Accordingly, they thought it better and more for their
interest to reduce towns in any other way than this; and in all those
years during which they were constantly engaged in wars we find very
few instances of their proceeding by siege.

For the capture of towns, therefore, they trusted either to assault or
to surrender. Assaults were effected either by open force, or by force
and stratagem combined. When a town was assailed by open force, the
walls were stormed without being breached, and the assailants were said
“_aggredi urbem corona,_” because they encircled the city with their
entire strength and kept up an attack on all sides. In this way they
often succeeded in carrying towns, and even great towns, at a first
onset, as when Scipio took new Carthage in Spain. But when they failed
to carry a town by storm, they set themselves to breach the walls with
battering rams and other warlike engines; or they dug mines so as to
obtain an entrance within the walls, this being the method followed in
taking Veii; or else, to be on a level with the defenders, they erected
towers of timber or threw up mounds of earth against the outside of the
walls so as to reach the top.

Of these methods of attack, the first, wherein the city was entirely
surrounded, exposed the defenders to more sudden perils and left them
more doubtful remedies. For while it was necessary for them to have a
sufficient force at all points, it might happen that the forces at
their disposal were not numerous enough to be everywhere at once, or to
relieve one another. Or if their numbers were sufficient, they might
not all be equally resolute in standing their ground, and their failure
at any one point involved a general defeat. Consequently, as I have
said, this method of attack was often successful. But when it did not
succeed at the first, it was rarely renewed, being a method dangerous
to the attacking army, which having to secure itself along an extended
line, was left everywhere too weak to resist a sally made from the
town; nay, of itself, was apt to fall into confusion and disorder. This
method of attack, therefore, could be attempted once only and by way of
surprise.

Against breaches in the walls the defence was, as at the present day,
to throw up new works; while mines were met by counter-mines, in which
the enemy were either withstood at the point of the sword, or baffled
by some other warlike contrivance; as by filling casks with feathers,
which, being set on fire and placed in the mine, choked out the
assailants by their smoke and stench. Where towers were employed for
the attack, the defenders sought to destroy them with fire; and where
mounds of earth were thrown up against the walls, they would dig holes
at the base of the wall against which the mound rested, and carry off
the earth which the enemy were heaping up; which, being removed from
within as fast as it was thrown up from without, the mound made no
progress.

None of these methods of attack can long be persisted in and the
assailant, if unsuccessful, must either strike his camp and seek
victory in some other direction, as Scipio did when he invaded Africa
and, after failing in the attempt to storm Utica, withdrew from his
attack on that town and turned his strength against the Carthaginian
army in the field; or else recourse must be had to regular siege, as by
the Romans at Veii, Capua, Carthage, Jerusalem, and divers other cities
which they reduced in this way.

The capture of towns by stratagem combined with force is effected, as
by the Romans at Palæopolis, through a secret understanding with some
within the walls. Many attempts of this sort have been made, both by
the Romans and by others, but few successfully, because the least
hindrance disarranges the plan of action, and because such hindrances
are very likely to occur. For either the plot is discovered before it
can be carried out, as it readily may, whether from treachery on the
part of those to whom it has been communicated, or from the
difficulties which attend its inception, the preliminary arrangements
having to be made with the enemy and with persons with whom it is not
permitted, save under some pretext or other, to hold intercourse; or if
it be not discovered while it is being contrived, a thousand
difficulties will still be met with in its execution. For if you arrive
either before or after the appointed time, all is ruined. The faintest
sound, as of the cackling of the geese in the Capitol, the least
departure from some ordinary routine, the most trifling mistake or
error, mars the whole enterprise. Add to which, the darkness of night
lends further terror to the perils of such undertakings; while the
great majority of those engaged in them, having no knowledge of the
district or places into which they are brought, are bewildered and
disconcerted by the least mishap, and put to flight by every imaginary
danger. In secret nocturnal enterprises of this sort, no man was ever
more successful than Aratus of Sicyon, although in any encounter by day
there never was a more arrant coward. This we must suppose due rather
to some special and occult quality inherent in the man, than to success
being naturally to be looked for in the like attempts. Such
enterprises, accordingly, are often planned, but few are put into
execution, and fewer still with success.

When cities are acquired by surrender, the surrender is either
voluntary or under compulsion; voluntary, when the citizens appeal to
you for protection against some threatened danger from without, as
Capua submitted to the Romans; or where they are moved by a desire to
be better governed, and are attracted by the good government which he
to whom they surrender is seen exercising over others who have placed
themselves in his hands; as was the case with the Rhodians, the
Massilians, and others who for like causes gave themselves up to the
Roman people. Compulsory surrenders take place, either as the result of
a protracted siege, like those we have spoken of above; or from the
country being continually wasted by incursions, forays, and similar
severities, to escape which a city makes its submission.

Of the methods which have been noticed, the Romans, in preference to
all others, used this last; and for four hundred and fifty years made
it their aim to wear out their neighbours by invasion and by defeat in
the open field, while endeavouring, as I have elsewhere said, to
establish their influence over them by treaties and conventions. It was
to this method of warfare therefore that they always mainly trusted,
because, after trying all others, they found none so free from
inconvenience and disadvantage—the procedure by siege involving expense
and delay, that by assault, difficulty and danger, and that by secret
practice, uncertainty and doubt. They found, likewise, that while in
subduing one obstinate city by siege many years might be wasted, a
kingdom might be gained in a single day by the defeat of a hostile army
in the field.