Key to Easy Latin Stories for beginners/Part IV/II
II.THE SIEGE OF BARCA.
Mines and countermines.
138.They say that the Persians surrounded the city of Barca with a blockade, requiring that some men who had committed some crime should be given up; but that the townsmen did not accept the condition, since the whole of their number were sharers in the murder. And so they attacked Barca for nine successive months, driving mines, to enter the city, and often making an attack on the wall. But a coppersmith traced the mines by means of a brazen shield. For he carried the shield round within the wall, and knocked it against the pavement of the city. Now other places where he knocked it were dumb; but in the part where the mines were, there the copper of the shield used to give forth a sound. Therefore, the townsmen, driving mines in the opposite direction in the same places, used to kill the Persians while digging the ground.
Equivocation.
139.When much time was being wasted thus, and many men were falling on either side, the leader of the Persians forms this plan. Understanding that Barca could not be taken by force, he set about doing this. He dug by night a wide ditch, on which he laid planks of little strength, and above the planks he heaped on earth in such a way that the surface was level with the rest of the soiL At daybreak he invited the men of Barca to a conference. At last, sacrificing over the hidden ditch, the leaders on both sides said that the oath should remain while that earth remained firm; that the men of Barca promised to pay money to the Great King: the Persians, that they would do nothing fresh against the men of Barca.
Treachery.
140.When the treaty was made, the men of Barca began to come out of the city themselves, and to allow the enemy to enter within the wall, but the Persians, having broken up the hidden bridge, began to rush into the city. Now the Persians broke the bridge which they had made for this reason, that they might stand by the oath which they had made with the men of Barca, ‘that the treaty should be a settled one as long as the earth remained firm.’ But when the bridge was broken the treaty no longer remained settled.